Alexander The Great by Graham Phillips

Author:Graham Phillips [Phillips, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9780753535820
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2012-03-31T06:00:00+00:00

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER EIGHT

Roxanne was Alexander’s first wife and queen. After three years with Roxanne, however, Alexander took a second wife, the Persian princess Statira, daughter of the late King Darius. The historical sources all record that Roxanne was insanely jealous of this new bride, giving her a possible motive to murder her husband in revenge.

• During one of the last skirmishes of the Bactrian campaign Roxanne was captured by the Macedonian army. The sixteen-year-old daughter of a Sogdian chieftain, she is said to have been beautiful, intelligent and vivacious. Alexander appears to have fallen madly in love with her, because he married her almost at once. From all accounts, the feelings were mutual. There was certainly no political reason for the marriage as Roxanne’s father was a minor figure of no real importance.

• In 327 BC the war with Persia was over and all of its once mighty empire was now under Alexander’s control. With this added to his homeland of Macedonia, its adjacent countries and the Greek states, Alexander now ruled the largest empire the world had ever known. It should have been time to return home and call it a day, but for reasons best known to himself Alexander decided to push on into India.

• India was a place of mystery to Europeans, and to most Persians too, and Roxanne seems to have become enthralled by this exotic land. She was excited by plants and animals she had never seen, captivated by the local customs and intrigued by the Hindu religion. In the Punjab the conquerors encountered Hindu Brahmans and one of them, a priest named Kalyana, agreed to accompany Alexander as an interpreter and adviser on local affairs. Kalyana seems to have been fascinated by the Europeans – he was the only Indian who returned with them to the west. Keen to discover as much as she could about Indian culture, Roxanne struck up a close friendship with Kalyana and seems to have been quick to learn his language.

• In India, Roxanne was able to visit a number of Hindu temples and shrines. She seems to have understood more about the native religion than Alexander’s own court scribes. On one occasion, when visiting a sacred grove in which there stood a white marble statue of a youthful god, the learned Greeks in Alexander’s entourage believed it to be a depiction of the Greek god Dionysus, as the deity’s images were similar. It was, however, as Roxanne pointed out, the Hindu god Skanda, the son of Shiva.

• Could such an endearing and seemingly spiritually minded a girl really have killed her husband three years later because he had taken a second queen? There is no indication that Alexander was actually in love with Statira, as his marriage to her seems to have been purely a political act to appeal to his new Persian subjects and bolster his claim to be their king. Nevertheless, Roxanne may have felt humiliated before the world, and it would not be the

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