Stateira II

Stateira the younger, eldest daughter of Darius III and Stateira the elder, was captured with her mother and grandmother Sisygambis at Issus in 333 BC and held at Susa under Macedonian protection for nine years. In February 324 BC she was given in marriage to Alexander at the Susa mass-marriages — the great ceremony at which about ninety of the Companions wed daughters of the Persian and Median nobility and 10,000 common soldiers received formal recognition of their local marriages (Arr. *Anab.* 7.4.6–8 gives 'about ninety'; Chares of Mytilene via Athenaeus 12.538b–540a gives ninety-two specifically; Plut. *Alex.* 70.3; Diod. 17.107.6). The source tradition is divided on whether Alexander's principal bride at Susa was called 'Stateira' (Plut. and Diod.) or 'Barsine' (Arr. *Anab.* 7.4.4 — probably the same woman under a second regnal name, as the generation-long overlap of these Achaemenid royal names in the Darius III / Artaxerxes III families is attested). She became Alexander's second royal wife alongside Roxane, and the political logic — the heir of the Macedonian conqueror wed to the eldest daughter of the last Achaemenid Great King — made her the highest-value dynastic token of the Succession. After Alexander's death Roxane, fearing a rival claimant if Stateira were pregnant, had her and her sister Drypetis murdered and the bodies thrown into a well (Plut. *Alex.* 77.6).

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