Not only so, but Alexander himself is said to have become more inclined at that time to believe accusations which were plausible in every way, as well as to inflict very severe punishment upon those who were convicted even of small offences, because with the same disposition he thought they would be likely to perform great ones.[1]
In Susa also he celebrated both his own wedding and those of his companions. He himself married Barsine, the eldest daughter of Darius,[2] and according to Aristobulus, besides her another, Parysatis, the youngest daughter of Ochus.[3] He had already married Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes the Bactrian.[4] To Hephaestion he gave Drypetis, another daughter of Darius, and his own wife's sister; for he wished Hephaestion's children to be first cousins to his own. To Craterus he gave Amastrine, daughter of Oxyartes the brother of Darius; to Perdiccas, the daughter of Atropates, viceroy of Media; to Ptolemy the confidential body-guard, and Eumenes the royal secretary, the daughters of Artabazus, to the former Artacama, and to the latter Artonis. To Nearchus he gave the daughter of Barsine and Mentor; to Seleucus the daughter of Spitamenes the Bactrian. Likewise to the rest of his Companions he gave the choicest daughters of the Persians and Medes, to the number of eighty. The weddings were celebrated after the Persian manner, seats being placed in a row for the bridegrooms; and after the banquet the brides
- ↑ Cf. Curtius, x. 5.
- ↑ She was also called Statira. See Diodorus, xvii. 107; Plutarch (Alex., 70). She is called Arsiuoe by Photius.
- ↑ "By these two marriages, Alexander thus engrafted himself upon the two lines of antecedent Persian kings. Oohus was of the Achaemenid family, but Darius Codomannus, father of Statira, was not of that family; he began a new lineage. About the overweening regal state of Alexander, outdoing even the previous Persian kings, see Pylarchus apud Athenaeum, xii. p. 539."—Grote.
- ↑ See p. 242.
