Roxane

Roxane (Persian Raoxshna, 'the little star'), daughter of the Sogdian noble Oxyartes, was captured in the spring of 327 BC when Alexander besieged the rock-stronghold where Oxyartes had placed his family for safety (Arr. *Anab.* 4.18–19; Curt. 8.4.23–30). Arrian 4.19.5 calls her 'the most beautiful woman in Asia after the wife of Darius'; Curtius 8.4.23 gives her age as approximately sixteen. Alexander chose to marry her on the spot — Arrian frames the union as a political bond with the Sogdian nobility, Plutarch *Alex.* 47 as genuine passion — in a ceremony conducted with both Macedonian rites (bride-cake cut with a sword and shared) and Zoroastrian custom. The marriage was read by the Companion-cavalry aristocracy as the first formal step toward dynastic fusion with the conquered east, a resentment that fed the Opis mutiny four years later. Roxane bore Alexander a son posthumously: Alexander IV was born at Babylon in the summer of 323, after his father's death in June, and this child became the nominal co-king of the Macedonian empire with Philip III Arrhidaeus (Diod. 18.2; Justin 13.4). Both mother and son were murdered by Cassander c. 309 BC, ending the direct Argead line.

Associated Places