Tag: Roxana

Roxana (Avestan: Raoxshna or Roshanak, “luminous beauty”; Persian: رخسانه‎ Rokhsāna; Pashto: روښانه Rox̌āna), sometimes Roxanne and Roxane, was a Bactrian princess and a wife of Alexander the Great. She was born earlier than the year 343 BC, though the precise date remains uncertain.
Roxana was the daughter of a Bactrian named Oxyartes of Balkh in Bactria (around modern-day Balkh province of Afghanistan), and married Alexander at the age of 16 after he visited the fortress of Sogdian Rock. Balkh was the last of the Persian Empire’s provinces to fall to Alexander. Ancient sources describe Alexander’s professed love for Roxana. She accompanied him on his campaign in Pakistan and northern India in 326 BC.
After Alexander’s sudden death at Babylon in 323 BC, she bore him a posthumous son called Alexander IV Aegus. Also, after Alexander’s death, Roxana murdered Alexander’s other widow, Stateira II, as well as either Stateira’s sister Drypteis or Parysatis II (Alexander’s third wife)….