All Alexander's Women

by Robbert Bosschart

  Kleopatra (355–308 BC; Alexander’s full sister, queen of Molossia and Alexander’s ‘dynastic representative’ in Makedon; potentially capable of transmitting Alexander’s throne rights by marrying any of the pretenders in the Successor Wars, which is why Antigonos One-Eye finally had her murdered in 308 to forestall her marriage to Ptolemy. For her biography, see Chapter 5) VI, 1, 3, 29, 30, 85–96, 105, 120, 124, 125, 135, 160

  Koran (the Muslim holy book, quoting the prophet Muhammad, who in Sura 18, verse 82–102, mentions Alexander as “the Two- Horned One whom Allah made powerful in the earth”) 145, 146

  Krateros (370–321 BC; Makedonian general, married in Susa to Amastris) 2, 25, 27, 28, 94, 104, 105, 118, 119, 120, 124, 129, 130

  Kreta (=Crete, see id.; Greek island, in ancient times naval empire under the Minos dynasty) 56, 77, 154

  Ktesias of Knidos in Karia (c. 444–374 BC; court doctor of Artaxerxes II and author of books about the history and geography of Assyria, Persia and India – in the last case, most of it invented) 38, 44, 69, 71, 109, 158

  Kuhrt, Amélie (Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at Univeristy College London, and fellow of the British Academy. Also see Reference Works on page 162) 38, 44, 45, 134, 162

  Kunaxa/Cunaxa (70 kms north from Babylon, site of 401 BC battle between Artaxerxes II and Cyrus the Younger) 69, 109

  Kunnanè (=Cynnane, see id.) 2, 15–17, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 119, 120, 124, 135, 159

  L:

  Labraunda/Labraynda (temple for Zeus with Labrys, in Karia) 78

  Labrys (in Luwian: “Labra”; double-headed axe of the Amazons, sacred to the Great Goddess and later to Zeus Karios; national icon of the Karians, and of the Minoans on Crete where the “Labyrinth” stood) 77, 78

  Lada (=Luwian word for “woman”; name of the Great Goddess/fertility deity in ancient Karia) 78

  Lamian War (323 BC uprising in Greece, led by Athens, against Antipater; squashed by Krateros) 93

  Langaros (king of the Agriani, expert mountaineer troops; long-standing allies of Alexander. He offered Cynnane for a bride to Langaros, who died however before the marriage could take place) 16, 91

  Lanike (=Hellanike, born c. 378 BC, sister of Kleitos the Black; Ath.IV.128 states she was Alexander’s nurse/nanny) 160

  Laomedon (375–320 BC; Makedonian general, somatofylax, friend of Alexander, made satrap of Syria by Perdikkas) 36

  League of Corinth (Greek alliance forged by Philip II after his victory at Chaironea in 338 BC, in which 18-year old Alexander distinguished himself routing Thebans and Athenians) VII, 15

  League of Delos/”Delian League”: Athens’ 5th century ‘empire’) 114

  Leonnatos (356–322 BC Makedonian general, somatofylax ; made satrap of Hellespont by Perdikkas; would-be bridegroom for Kleopatra, he died in the Lamian war before the marriage could take place) 91, 93

  Leonidas (c.350 BC; relative of Olympias who named him as young Alexander’s tutor) VI, 88

  Leosthenes (in 323 BC, Athenian leader of the failed ‘Lamian’ rebellion against Antipater/Krateros) 119

  Libanius (314–394 AD) prolific Greco-Roman author, friend of pagan emperor Julian the Apostate; commented on Alexander’s Tomb in Alexandria)

  Liber de Morte (c. 309 BC; faked Last Will of Alexander the Great) 123–125, 145, 147, 156

  Linear A (ancient Minoan script on clay tablets in Crete, in use from 18th. to 15th. century BC; similar in aspect to the Karian alphabet) 77

  Lucanus, Marcus (36–65 AD Roman writer, described Caesar’s visit to the Alexander Tomb)

  Luwian (principal language in the Hittite Empire; attested since 2400 BC, precursor of Karian) 78

  Luxor (see: Ammon Temple) 44

  Lydia (kingdom of Croesus in Asia Minor with capital at Sardès, conquered in 547 BC by Cyrus the Great; then satrapy; in 322 BC, Kleopatra was named “commander” of its garrison by Perdikkas) 70, 93, 136, 151

  Lykia (satrapy in southern Asia Minor) VII, 2, 125

  Lysander (405 BC Spartan general, received code message)

  Lysimachos (360–281 BC; Makedonian general, somatofylax; King of Thrace; married the widowed queen Amastris in 302, then led the allied forces in the battle of Ipsos defeating Antigonos. To reinforce his military alliance with Ptolemy, married his daughter Arsinoe in 300 BC, causing Amastris to withdraw to Herakleia Pontos; Lysimachos died on the battlefield of Corupedion near Sardès, defeated by Seleukos) 94, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 121, 124, 125, 155

  M:

  Magians (hereditary soothsayers from Media; they sat besides Alexander at the celebration banquet of Opis) 153

  Mallia/Multan (Indian city where Peukestas saved Alexander’s life in 325 with the ‘Achilles shield’) VIII

  Marakanda (= city of Samarkand, in present-day Uzbekistan; in 328/7, Alexander’s winter HQ, where in a drunken brawl he killed Kleitos “the Black”) VIII

  Mary Renault (author; see Renault, Mary) 10, 11, 163

  Massaga (fortress city in the Swat valley, Pakistan; capital of Assacenians, routed by Alexander in 326 BC; he captured the city in a bloodbath, but reinstated the queen Kleofis/Kripa, see ibid.) VIII, 34, 35

  Massagetai (in 529 BC, a subtribe of the Scythians near the Aral Sea, attacked by Cyrus the Great, who lost his life in this battle. The queen of the Massagetai, Tomyris, could be the historical character the Persians would see as the source of Amazon legends) 3, 12

  Maussolo (377–353 BC king/satrap of Karia, with queen Artemisia II; his “Mausoleum” tomb was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) 30, 32, 33, 80, 81

  Mazday/Mazaios (c. 390–328, general and satrap; in 331, appointed by Alexander to govern Babylonia – the first Persian to receive such high office in his reign. This is by far the most important precedent for Alexander’s ‘state policy’ of integration. Therefore, the career of Mazday, and the reasons why Alexander made him satrap of Babylon, merit a much denser biography than the scope of this book allows. The essential data are:

  Mazday appears for the first time, both on excavated coins and the written record, in the year 361 BC. He is appointed satrap of Kilikia, to succeed the recently murdered Datames. Kilikia and its capital Tarsos now are the principal watchtower and staging area for Persia’s military control over Asia Minor. The aftershocks of the so-called Great Satraps’ Revolt (366 to 360) make the Tarsos garrison, and the stronghold of Cyinda with its treasury deposit, the key instruments for the Persian king’s policy. It means that Artaxerxes II, by appointing such a young officer to this post –Mazday has not yet reached 30 years of age– is highlighting his absolute confidence in his man. He must know him personally. This, in turn, makes it a near total certainty that Mazday proceeds from the officer corps of the Royal Guards, the ‘Immortals’; and that, until his appointment in Tarsos, he would be a commonplace presence in palace for the king and his family (including the then young princess Sisygambis). Good connections at court allow Mazday to survive his first disaster, after ten years in office at Tarsos. In 351 BC Artaxerxes III Ochus, on the throne since 358, orders Mazday to put down a rebellion. Together with Belesys, satrap of Syria, they are to subdue the uprising of a city-state in Fenicia, Sidon, allied to mutinous Egyptians and ‘Yaunas’. But Mazday and Belesys suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of a (basically, Greek) mercenary army commanded by general Mentor. In the end, Ochus himself has to lead the Persian forces to crush the rebels. In 345 he takes Sidon and has all its 40,000 inhabitants killed out of hand.

  Belesys is disgraced – but not Mazday. Instead, he receives orders to take over the satrapy of Syria, and to direct personally the military occupation of Fenicia. To finance these operations, he issues his own coinage from the mint in Sidon (342–337). His status and his territorial control over Fenicia, Syria and nearby zones in Mesopotamia increase by the year. In the political chaos after the death of Artaxerxes III, until Darius III ascends the throne, Mazday becomes a force to be reckoned with. In 336, he is proclaimed ‘Friend of the King
’ and honoured with the promise of a future marriage to Darius’ baby daughter, Barsine. The queen-mother Sisygambis will have had much to say in this election of the groom for her first grandchild.

  Mazday is at the elbow of his king in the decisive battle of Gaugamela against Alexander. He directs the Persian army’s right wing with great success –all sources agree–, though even that is insufficient to avoid Alexander’s victory. While Darius flees to the northeast, Mazday, with a few units that have survived the Persian disaster, falls back on Babylon. (He has personal ties to the city; a wife, probably, as his elder son carries the typical Babylonian name of Ardu-Bel.) He knows that he cannot defend Babylon with these scant forces. In exchange for Alexander’s promise that the city will not be sacked, he opts for surrender.

  Alexander makes a triumphal and festive entry into Babylon – and at the same time, he names Mazday as the governor of this metropolis that is to be the capital of his dominions. This is the most impacting example of a Persian leader accepting a key appointment in Alexander’s reign. Mazday remains in office, to everybody’s satisfaction, until his death in 328; his sons will be promoted in 324 to the highest ranks in Alexander’s army.

  The surprising choice of general Mazday to begin –and with his example, promote– Alexander’s policy of combining victors and vanquished to build up his new empire, can only be based on first-rate inside information. Just a few weeks have passed since the battle of Gaugamela, where Mazday was a most effective enemy leader. Alexander must have relied on the counsel of a top-level Persian advisor who could weigh and explain the merits of each candidate. It is the conviction of the author of this book that Alexander’s advisor was the Persian queen-mother Sisygambis, who had known Mazday for decades. By this time, Sisygambis had been travelling with Alexander for some two years already, since November 333 in Issos) VII, 42–43

  Meander river (northern boundary of Karia, present-day W-Turkey) 77

  Meda (c. 358, second wife of Philip, with whom she had no children ) 89

  Medates (331 BC, Persian noble, leader of the Uxians who opposed the Makedonian advance on Perspolis; married to a niece of Sisygambis, and pardoned by Alexander at the queen-mother’s plea) VII, 40, 41

  Meissner, Bruno (professor of History at Leipzig university, expert on Mesopotamian queens; published Alexander und Gilgamos in 1884) 73

  Memfis (c. 331 BC, religious capital of Egypt; today, a suburb of Cairo) VII

  Memnon of Herakleia (a historian who probably lived in the 1st century AD; part of his History of Herakleia, covering the period 364–70 BC and thus including the story of queen Amastris, was abridged and preserved by Photius) 47, 105, 106, 107, 157, 158, 159

  Memnon of Rhodes (c. 375–333 , Greek mercenary general for Darius III; married to Barsine, daughter of his Rhodian sister) VII, 18, 20, 81, 82

  Mentor (c. 380–340 BC, Greek mercenary general and elder brother of Memnon, to whom he left his wife Barsine and their daughter) 18, 81

  Meroé (capital of Kush/Nubia in 593 BC-350 AD, the so-called ‘Meroitic period’ when Egyptian influence gave way to the home-bred culture of an independent state) 3, 61

  Metz Epitome (late Latin manuscript of unknown origin, found at the city of Metz, containing incomplete chronicles about Alexander’s deeds; with the add of his purported Testament Liber de Morte, probably from other sources) 35, 156, 160

  Mieza in Makedon (today: Naoussa; Peukestas’ birthplace; c. 342 BC, site of Aristoteles’ school for Alexander and his companions from Philip’s court) 89

  Minos (king of Minoan sea realm 2000–1500 BC on Crete) 77

  Miletos (rich city in Ionia captured by Alexander in 334 BC) VII, 78, 152

  Mirzapizaka (woman employee in Susa who c. 480 BC travels on official business to Persepolis) 72

  Mithra(s) (ancient Persian god turned into ‘Saviour’ by Zoroaster) 55, 56, 113

  Molossia (landlocked kingdom in N-W Greece; its capital, Dodona, was the birthplace of princess Polyxena/Myrtale/Olympias, future mother of Alexander and Kleopatra. Molossia’s royal family claims descent from Achilles. At least since the 3rd millennium BC, Dodona was the site of a shrine of “Gaia” the Great Goddess, with its famous oracle in a sacred oak grove. Taken over by Zeus c. 1400 BC, the oracle was still consulted by the pagan Roman emperor Julian in 362 AD on his forthcoming campaign against the Persians) VI, 3, 29, 30, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 98

  Murashu (bankers/tax farmers in Nippur; their archive found there at excavations yielded records dating to 455–403 BC; 18 texts in the Murashu Archive mention queen mother Parysatis) 73

  Mush (site of Anahita temple) 55

  Mylasa (former, landlocked capital of Karia; under king Maussolo, the harbor city Halikarnassos became the new capital) 78, 80, 83

  Myrtale (“of the myrtle garland”, thus honouring Afrodite/Great Goddess; name chosen by Polyxena/Olympias at her religious initiation) 29, 88

  N:

  Nag Hammadi (A collection of 13 codices with 52 not always complete texts was discovered in 1945 in Upper Egypt at Nag Hammadi, near the temple at Dendera dedicated to the goddess Hathor. However, their translation was not completed and published until the 1970ies. In parallel, the ‘Papyrus Berolinensis’ that had been acquired in Cairo by the German scholar Carl Reinhardt in 1896, saw its publication delayed until 1955. This ‘Berlin Gnostic Codex’, or PB 8502, often identified as the ‘Akhmim Codex’, coincides with 2 texts found at Nag Hammadi. It was an decisive discovery that this codex held the most complete surviving copy of the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, or Magdalene. Two other fragments of the same Gospel, from separate Greek editions, were later unearthed in Northern Egypt at excavations in Oxyrhinchus. This faxt explains early Christian traditions saying that the disdain of Peter and other apostles towards Mary Magdalene as a woman, was compounded by jealousy because she was an ‘outsider’: Jezus had come to know her on a journey in Egypt where she had been initiated in religious knowledge, something unheard of in the Jewish society of their days)

  Nearchos of Kreta (c. 370–300; Alexander’s admiral; married in Susa to Barsine’s likenamed daughter) VIII, 2, 27, 90, 140, 141, 154, 155, 156, 159

  Neoptolemos (traditional king name in Molossia; son of Kleopatra, reigned in 317/12 and 302–297 BC ) 87, 91

  Neti (mythological Sumerian chief gatekeeper of the Underworld) 52

  Nikaia (322 BC intended bride for Perdikkas; Antipater’s daughter) 93, 94

  Nikesipolis of Ferai (Thessalian wife to Philip of Makedon and mother of princess Thessalonike; but Nikesipolis died three weeks after the childbirth, and Thessalonike was brought up by Olympias) 89

  Nikomedia (birthplace of Arrian, ver ibid.) 155

  Nile river (see also: Canal dug to Red Sea on Darius I’s orders) VII, 25, 127, 130, 131, 132, 137

  Nin-me-shar-ra (“Lady of all the Divine Powers”; hymn to goddess Inanna, written c. 2250 BC by her priestess Enheduanna, see id.) 51

  Ninshubur (handmaid of the goddess Inanna) 51, 52

  Nippur (ancient city on Eufrates, 160 kms S-E from Baghdad; site of Murashu excavation, see id) 51, 73

  Nizami (1141–1209 AD Persian author of the Sikandar-Nama; see: Abu Muhammad bin Yusuf) 142–146

  O:

  Ochus (Old Persian: Vahush=the Good One; birth name of Artaxerxes III, see Persia’s King List: IX; and Family Tree: X> 6, 24, 26, 30, 32, 38, 56, 72, 81, 89, 90, 104, 113, 150, 160

  Olympias (373–316 BC, princess and later regent of Molossia; queen of Makedon as wife of Philip; mother of Alexander ; see: her biography by prof. E. Carney, listed in Reference Books, p. 162. At birth she was called Polyxena but later, at her religious initiation, she chose a new name herself: Myrtale. In the end, she was called ‘Olympias’ as a reminder of Philip’s victory at the Olympic Games of 356 BC, on the day Alexander was born. ) VI, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 17, 25, 28–30, 33, 36, 37, 41, 85–100
, 134, 147, 160, 162

  Onesikritos of Astypalaia (380–305 BC; Diogenes’ pupil; helmsman on Alexander’s flag ship; published an Alexander biography in 319 BC) 139, 140, 141, 154, 155

  Opis (near present-day Baghdad; in 324, site of a mutiny of Alexander’s Makedonian soldiers; see Alexander’s speech at Opis as quoted by Arrian, pages 150–153) VIII, 136, 150

  Orexartes/Jaxartes (name used by Plutarch for the river, now known as the Syr Darya, that runs to the Aral Sea) 141

  Orontes (son of King’s Eye Artasyras; in 401 BC married to Rodogune, eldest daughter of Artaxerxes II, and appointed satrap of Armenia; in 365 led the ‘Great Satrap’s Revolt’, but was later pardoned by Artaxerxes III. In 331 BC at Gaugamela his likenamed grandson commanded Armenian troops and later befriended Peukestas, sic Diodoros; his satrapy included the Tapurians, who under Peukestas reinforced Alexander’s army) 109

  Orontobates (in 335 BC, satrap of Karia, Persian son-in-law of Pixodaro; fled the country when Alexander reinstated queen Ada I) 6, 31, 82

  Orosius (375–420 AD Christian theologian, author of Historiarum adversum Paganos based on texts of Caesar, Livius, Justin, Tacitus, Suetonius and bishop Eusebios)

  Osiris (ancient Egyptian Underworld god; king, brother, husband of the goddess Isis) 60, 63

  Ostanes (uncle of Sisygambis and father of her husband Arsames) 70

  Oxathres (brother of Artaxerxes II) 70

  Oxidelcis ( in the pseudo-Kallisthenes: the misspelled name of Oxyatres, see id)

  Oxus (river that runs to the Aral Sea; today, called Amu Darya, it marks part of the frontier between Turkmenistan and Uzbekstan; in ancient times, called Oxus, and considered the northern boundary of the Achaemenid empire) 54, 152

  Oxyatres (Old Persian: *Hu-xšaθra- “of good reign”, sic Tavernier; c. 375–320? BC; younger son of Sisygambis, thus brother of Darius III whom he bodily protects at the battle of Issos; after Darius’ death, comes to Alexander’s court and is elevated to the rank of doryforos/somatofylax; his General Staff post could be chief of the Persian intelligence service, for he possibly had been Darius’ King’s Eye; at the Susa marriages, at the request of Alexander, he gave his daughter Amastris in marriage to general Krateros)