Roxanawife of Alexander the Great also spelled Roxane

Main

wife of Alexander the Great. The daughter of the Bactrian chief Oxyartes, she was captured and married by Alexander in 327, during his conquest of Asia. After Alexander’s death (323) she had his second wife, Stateira (Barsine), killed, and she gave birth at Babylon to a son (Alexander IV), who was accepted by the Macedonian generals as joint king with the idiot Philip III Arrhidaeus (half brother of Alexander the Great). In 319 Roxana joined Alexander’s mother, Olympias, in Epirus, but she was captured in 316 in Macedonia by Cassander, who later took the title of king of Macedonia. He imprisoned Roxana at Amphipolis and then executed her and her son.

Citations

MLA Style:

"Roxana." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 20 Nov. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/511154/Roxana>.

APA Style:

Roxana. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 20, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/511154/Roxana

Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.

If you think a reference to this article on "Roxana (wife of Alexander the Great)" will enhance your Web site, blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article, and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.

You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.

copy link

We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.

Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.

A-Z Browse

Image preview