Roxana

Biography

Roxana was the daughter of the Bactrian nobleman Oxyartes, captured at the Siege of the Sogdian Rock in 327 BC. Alexander fell in love with her and married her — the only marriage he undertook out of inclination rather than political calculation, according to ancient sources, though it also served to bind the Bactrian nobility to his cause. She traveled with the army through the Indian campaign and was pregnant when Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC. She gave birth to a son, Alexander IV, who was nominally co-emperor with the mentally disabled Philip III Arrhidaeus under the regency of Perdiccas. Roxana had Darius III's daughter Stateira (Alexander's second wife) murdered immediately after Alexander's death, correctly judging that a rival claimant's mother was too dangerous to live. She survived the chaos of the early Diadochi period by attaching herself to Polyperchon, then to Olympias, but was captured with her son by Cassander in 316 BC. In 310 BC, Cassander had both Roxana and the twelve-year-old Alexander IV murdered to eliminate the last legitimate claimant.

Key Battles