Roxane, wife of Alexander
Variously spelt as Rhoxane, Roxana, Roxanne etc. Daughter of Oxyartes, a Bactrian or Sogdian noble who submitted to Alexander. Sister of Itanes. Traditionally Alexander is said to have fallen in love with her when she danced for her father’s guests, but the marriage in spring 327 BC is likely to have been politically motivated as well in order to bring to an end two years of guerilla warfare before Alexander moved on India. It would have left allies in his rear. Roxane is presumed to have been in her mid-teens.
Later that year, Alexander began campaigning for six months in the Swat highlands on his way to India. By this time Roxane was pregnant and was likely to have gone with Hephaestion and Perdiccas and the bulk of the army through the Khyber pass into India. Her son died in autumn 327 BC by the banks of the river Acesines.
The following year Alexander was seriously wounded by an arrow in his chest, and in June, Roxane would have accompanied Craterus westwards with the bulk of the army while Alexander continued southwards to the mouth of the Indus. They were not reunited until December 326 BC in Carmania.
In spring 324 BC at Susa, Alexander took two further wives, Stateira and Parysatis, both Persian royalty. Roxane’s status would have been somewhat diminished. When Hephaestion died in autumn of that year, Alexander probably realised his own mortality and that he had no heirs. As is popularly assumed, he may have taken comfort with Roxane for by the end of the year she was pregnant with Alexander IV. Alexander did not live to see his son, and according to the Alexander Romance, Roxane was devotedly by his bedside during his final illness, stopping him from throwing himself in the Euphrates.
On Alexander’s death, Roxane and her son came under Perdiccas’s protection and, probably at his instigation, she had Stateira and her sister Drypetis murdered and their bodies thrown down a well. There was a political, rather than a jealous, motive for this as anyone marrying them could claim to be Darius’s successor and oppose the Macedonians and the Argead kings.
Roxane and the two kings, Philip Arrhideus and her son Alexander IV, would have accompanied the army when Perdiccas as regent subjugated Cappadocia in 322 BC, and when he attempted to invade Egypt the following year. When Perdiccas was murdered, Ptolemy was offered the regency, but declined. Antipater was appointed regent with the settlement at Triparadisus and Roxane and the kings were removed to Macedonia.
Antipater died in 319 BC and the regency passed to his deputy Polyperchon, who in the ensuing struggle with Cassander, offered the guardianship of Alexander IV, and his mother, to Olympias to bring the Epirote forces of her nephew Aeacides into the contest. Olympias murdered Philip Arrhidaeus and Adea in 317 BC, but the following year Cassander besieged the royal family at Pydna and executed Olympias. He transferred Alexander IV and Roxane to Amphipolis under the guardianship of Glaucias. After the treaty of 311 BC between Cassander, Antigonus, Ptolemy and Lysimachus, it was agreed that Alexander IV should succeed as king when he reached the age of 14. Before he could do so however, Glaucias on Cassander’s orders, poisoned Roxane and her son in about 310 BC. They were buried at Aegae.