The Persian yoke had become so intolerable to the Egyptians that they were prepared to accept any other conqueror with positive enthusiasm, and the Macedonian Alexander and his followers were welcomed rather as friends than as enemies and hated masters.
The colossal empire created by the splendid military audacity combined with the judicious tolerance of Alexander the Great may be said to have dropped to pieces by its own weight, and a comparatively few years after his short career was ended, for he died at thirty-two, it had been partitioned among his generals.
Roxane or Roxana, first or chief wife of Alexander, for he married others later, could only in a theoretic sense be called Queen of Egypt, as of other countries of which her husband was master. The mad rush of battle and conquest left little time for the ostentatious display of royalty. Alexander was rather a great general than a reigning king intent upon the government and internal improvement of the various countries under his sway. He seemed to have hardly time to place one crown upon his head before he was fighting for another, and the outward trappings[336] of his office must have been military rather than royal. There could have been little opportunity for his wife to realize the grandeur of her position. Hence it was, in all probability, not till after his death that Roxane, the queen, entered Egypt, and then it was rather as a captive than as a reigning princess.
By a previous connection, not a legal marriage, with Barsine, widow of Darius’ best Greek general, Memnon, Alexander had a son named Herakles, who afterwards laid some claim to the kingdom, but it was Roxane, a Bactrian princess, famed for her beauty, that he first made his lawful wife. She was the daughter of Oxyartes, “who commanded the Sagdian rock for Darius,” and on the reduction of this fortress, married the conqueror.
We can picture to ourselves a beautiful mountain region, the mad onrush of troops, the clang of arms, the brief delirium of a battle and then a cessation of hostilities and the natural man seeking once more excitement in amusement. It is said that it was at a feast or drinking bout, where dancing was also going on, that Alexander first saw and at once fell in love with the handsome Roxane, spoken of by one writer as “of surpassing beauty and a grace rarely seen among barbarians.”
Alexander himself was a handsome man in the perfection of manhood. Born 356 B. C. he was twenty-nine years of age at the time of this marriage, which is said to have united two strains of Indo-European blood. The bride was probably much younger. Of him many likenesses,[337] usually busts or profiles on coins, exist. There is a bust of him in the British Museum, a terra-cotta in Munich, and he appears as the sun-god in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, as the Vernal-sun in a marble relief in the Louvre, in Paris, beside other places and his head on the coins. He was fair and ruddy, with finely cut features, an alert agreeable expression, a look of power and intellect and a full eye which could blaze with anger or melt into tenderness.
As opposites attract, and judging by the race from which she sprang (Bactria was approximately the present Bokhara and “has no small claim to be called the cradle of our present civilization”), we may believe Roxane to have been dark as Alexander was fair. A soft yet brilliant black or brown eye, raven tresses, ideal in feature and in form, and endowed with every grace. Alexander had proved himself invulnerable to many of the sex. The wife and daughter of Darius—women famed for their good looks—were treated by him with a respect and indifference to their charms unusual in such times and in such cases. He worshipped the god of war rather than the god of love. But the fair Roxane proved irresistible. He left her for a brief time and then returned and married her. To be the bride of the conqueror, especially when he was young and handsome, what more could any maiden desire? “None but the brave deserve the fair,” physical courage was the most admired of all the virtues, holding its place even in these latter days, and of that Alexander had a large share, as well as of other lovable qualities, impulsive,[338] generous and large-minded, as he often showed himself. He wore a great plume of white feathers on either side of his helmet which made his ever a conspicuous object of the field of battle, yet he bore a charmed life and escaped injury.
Cruel at times, he was still warm-hearted. Between his mother and himself existed a strong affection, and in a quarrel between her and his father, Philip, he took her side and fled with her. She was the imperious, passionate and fanatical Olympias, daughter of Neoptolemus, king of Epirus, to which country she returned with the son who inherited some of her traits, and to whom she was passionately attached. Plutarch gives many pleasant anecdotes of Alexander and refers to the numerous letters he wrote to his mother and other relatives and friends. He deprecated his mother’s interference with matters of war and state, but bore her reproaches with patience, and when Antipater wrote to him complaining of her he nobly replied, “One tear of a mother effaces a thousand such letters as these.”
With Alexander the name of Cleopatra is introduced into Egypt, where it was borne by a bewildering number of the subsequent royal family. His father put away his mother and married a second wife of that name, and to his sister Cleopatra, who married her uncle Alexander, her mother’s brother, King of Epirus, he was, as well as to Olympias, warmly attached.
The marriage of the conqueror with the native[339] princess placated the Bactrians and peace was restored. But the restless spirit of Alexander know no pause—he could not stay to dally in the arms of his love, no matter how beautiful, ambition was even a more powerful mistress and he rushed onward to new conquests.
He had adopted a conciliatory policy towards the Jews, he showed the same in Egypt. He sacrificed to the gods of the land, to Apis in particular, in marked and acceptable contrast to the conduct of Cambyses and Ochus, showed great favor to the priests and placed native Egyptians in posts of honor and command. He made a journey into the desert, a most difficult, hazardous and dangerous expedition, to visit the oracle of Amon, and caused himself to be proclaimed son of the god, with a curious mingling of faith in the oracle and deliberate adoption of a policy which conduced to his own interest as well as to those of the people whom he had conquered. He founded the city of Alexandria, which alone might have made famous any single or ordinary man, in addition to all else that he accomplished in his comparatively short life. The old Naucrates yielded its trade to the new city and the port of Canopus was closed, while Alexandria grew in splendor, importance and intellectual prestige and became one of the renowned cities of the world.
Separation and the life of constant excitement which he led may have lessened the hold of Roxane upon Alexander’s affection and a sudden passion for other women have overtaken him,[340] but it is more probable that motives of policy dictated his subsequent course.
At Suza occurred what was called “the great marriage of Europe and Asia.” Planned by Alexander to celebrate his victories and perhaps to hasten the return of peace and good-will. He took to wife Statira, daughter of Darius, and some authorities say, also Parysatis, daughter of Ochus, brother of Darius and one of the last Persian kings of Egypt. He coerced or persuaded his officers to follow his example, and not one but many marriages were then performed.
So intent was Alexander on his purpose that he put a premium on such connections and promised to pay the debts of those who would take Persian wives. At this time Ptolemy, later king of Egypt, was united to a certain princess Aatakama, daughter of Artabanes, of whom we find no further mention, suggesting that these enforced unions were not lasting, and were perhaps regarded by their principals as a mere spectacular performance, or even a comedy. These nuptials were celebrated with great magnificence the banqueting hall was laid with tables for numberless guests and was gorgeously decorated. Pillars of gold and silver, set with jewels, upheld the awning above, and nothing that Eastern luxury could suggest was spared to embellish the feast. According to the Persian custom a row of armchairs was placed for the bridegrooms and one beside each for the brides, who came in procession, fair to look upon, in beautiful and shining garments, enhanced by all the appliances of the[341] toilette, and took each her place beside her lord.
It was a marriage of fatal import to all concerned. We can imagine the jealous passion aroused in the breast of Roxane at the sight or report of all this, doubtless in striking contrast with her own simple nuptials, jeopardizing as it did the right of succession which might be claimed by her own children, yet unborn. Perchance the new queen added fuel to the flame by a haughty demeanor, a half-concealed or openly expressed contempt for the barbarian chief’s daughter who had preceded her. Be this as it may, Roxane rested not till, with the aid of Perdiccas, one of Alexander’s generals, she had her put to death. The story goes t............