pothos.org

Please help: I have an old annotation about queen-mother Sisygambis calling Alexander "my son the Great King", but stupidly I cannot find the source of this quote any more.

The story goes as follows:
When Alexander sends the corpse of Darius III to Sisygambis for its burial, Persian courtiers suggest to her she should go into (public) mourning over her dead son the Great King <Darius, of course> -- but she answers something like "my son the Great King is alive and well, and his name is Alexander".

Could anyone please remind me which classical author tells this anecdote and/or even better, tell me the exact wording given by that author (who? where?) of Sisygambis' phrase?????

Robbert Bosschart

Hi Robbert,

I have moved your post into the main forum, where people are more likely to see it. I am sure you will get a response - Pothos members love checking source quotations!

ATB

Hi Robbert. Unfortunately I don't know of any such quote in the Alexander sources. I suspect that this may have come from one or another of the later medieval Alexander Romances, but there were so many of them and I wouldn't know where to suggest you begin looking for it. The Romances are not particularly an area of interest for me, but I do have The Medieval French Alexander. I checked the index and found nothing relative to your search so you could probably rule out the French Romances.

Best regards,

Thank you very much, Amyntoros, for your attention and help.

In the meanwhile, I have found the origin of my old note: it came from a Wikipedia entry that (unhappily enough) warns it has no sources for what it says. But the Sisygambis quote features there in a way that suggests it comes from Quintus Curtius: <as follows: this is part of the Wikipedia text on Sisygambis>

"Quintus Curtius Rufus informs us of the reaction of Sisygambis to this desertion by Darius; Sisygambis never forgave him, and when called upon to mourn his death was reported to have said, I have only one son (Alexander) and he is king of all Persia."

I will go through Curtius again to see what I find -- but in view of your message, with not much hope....

Thanks again, anyway....
Robbert

rbosschart wrote:Thank you very much, Amyntoros, for your attention and help.

In the meanwhile, I have found the origin of my old note: it came from a Wikipedia entry that (unhappily enough) warns it has no sources for what it says. But the Sisygambis quote features there in a way that suggests it comes from Quintus Curtius: <as follows: this is part of the Wikipedia text on Sisygambis>

"Quintus Curtius Rufus informs us of the reaction of Sisygambis to this desertion by Darius; Sisygambis never forgave him, and when called upon to mourn his death was reported to have said, I have only one son (Alexander) and he is king of all Persia."

Hi Robbert,

I don't see how it can be Curtius. I have just had a look through Books 5 and 6 - Darius' death occurs at the end of Book 5, but the last bit of Book 5 and the first few lines of Book 6 are lost; and I couldn't find anything about Sisygambis' reaction to Darius' death in either of the books. I can't believe it would come later.

If I get a chance later I will look it up in a couple of other books I have - but I have to do some work first!

ATB

Well, I've had a look, and I can't find any reference to this in Arrian, Curtius, Plutarch or Justin. I haven't checked Diodorus yet, but would be surprised if he had it if Curtius and Justin don't.

I fear it might be as Amyntoros says - a version of the Romance.

ATB

Thank you ever so much, Marcus - that was quite a research haul.

Yes, the logical thing would be for such a quote to appear AFTER the death of Darius; but you never know if in some different context it might tempt a classic writer to show off Alexander's appeal by reminding the reader of such an outlandish thing as the mother of his enemy vouching for him... <and not even quote this mother's name in the process; possibly the "search string" would have to include vague descriptions like "enemy's mother", or just "mother">.

Else, the only solution would be to read through all texts available, Romances included - a life's work, I'm afraid. But I still have a feeling that this quote is not dreamt up, but very much consistent with the rest we know about Sisygambis.

Truth is, I would love to contact whoever wrote that stub for Wikipedia and ask where he/she got that Sisygambis quote from -- but I don't know how/if Wikipedia functions in that way. Do you?

Best regards,
Robbert

rbosschart...could you link to the wiki article that says that? I went and looked, but couldn't see it. If I find it I could tell you something more...I know most of the "players" there, and could find out where they got it. Thanks.

Try Mary Renault; either the persian boy or funeral games, neither to hand at mo ; nor upper case

Hello Athenas Owl and Agesilaos, wonderful to have you on board in this quest -- yes, I will try Mary Renault -whom I adore anyway- as I also have her bio "The Nature of A" on the shelf, besides the trilogy.

For Owl: the Wikipedia stub with the famous quote can be found following this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisygambis

and it sure would be great if you could contact its author(s) to try and find out where they found the quote!

Lots of thanks to all, best regards, Robbert

Oh my goodness....

The author of that article is apparently banned...they wrote the article in 2005 and 2006...there is no way of contacting them and as they provided no cites one has to assume they were winging it with romantic flair...as they say in one of their edit summaries "I believe this to be true"..soooooo as is often said, don't trust wikipedia. I am surprised no one has corrected that article though there is a tag on the top noting the problem.

I used to try to edit these articles but ran into that modern pesky thing we don't talk about here...gave up in frustration. "Sisygambis" languishes in obscurity because she isn't in any POV warrior's sights. Maybe I'll tackle it someday for that reason, nobody cares!