Politically, it always made sense that Alexander married the daughters of Darius III and Artaxerxes III. It even seems like a common move. But didn't the Greeks hold themselves to a higher standard than marrying a foreigner? Even if they didn't consider the Persians outright barbarians, they were foreigners and a conquered enemy. It seems also stranger that the marriage to Roxanna happened since she seems to be far from the ideal bride
What I am trying to ask is, didn't the Greeks expect Alexander to marry a Greek woman with a proper Greek wedding? I can grasp what Alexander had in mind with the Suda weddings, but it seems very strange that this āethnicā āGreekā element is not present
ALEXANDER & MARRIAGE
(and what was Greek āethnicityā)
First, let me link to 2 other posts that deal with Alexander and marriage, but donāt address the ethnic element except obliquely.
Argead Inheritance and Alexanderās (lack of) heirs
Why did it take so long for Alexander to father an heir?
A couple interpretive levels present here:
Greek ethnicity and marriage pre- and post-Persian wars
Macedonian expectations for (polygamous) royal marriage
Roman attitudes, especially Late Republic (Antony and Cleopatra in particular)
I want to note that Macedonians were regarded by Greeksāand regarded themselvesāas a separate people. Today in Greece, The Macedonian Question is a hot-button issue that reflects MODERN politics and nationalism. We can now say (finally have enough epigraphical evidence) that the ancient Macedonians appear to have spoken a form of northern Doric Greek, distinct from Thessalian and Epirote forms, so by modern definitions, weād consider them Greek.
But our ancient sources often speak of the Greeks and Macedonians as if they were different, if related, peoples. Certainly, while they shared many similarities, Macedonians were distinct, and didnāt especially want to BE Greeks. I tried to reflect that ancient attitude in Dancing with the Lion.
Furthermore, the tendency to glomp all of ancient Greece together reflects Early Modern ideas of nationhood. THERE WAS NO ANCIENT NATION CALLED GREECE. Thatās one of the first things I teach in my āIntro to Greek Historyā class. š āGreeceā (Hellas)* was simply a landmass. In fact, the ancient Greeks donāt appear to have referred to themselves as āGreekāāan ethnicityāuntil the Persian invasion.** Ethnicities were āAthenian,ā āSpartan,ā āCorinthian,ā āTheban,ā etc. Independent city-states with their own laws, coinage, magistracies, etc. In addition, they recognized larger dialect groupings: Ionic-Attic, Doric, Aeolic, then subdivisions within that. These larger dialect groupings also shared social customs and dress, as well as distinct religious cult. So, for instance, you wonāt find many/any temples to Hephaistus in Doric areas, and the peplos became associated with Doric women while Ionic-Attic wore the chiton. Even the later Roman province was called Achaia and didnāt include a lot of areas theyād have considered āGreekā (Hellene).
It took being invaded by a true āOtherā (Persia) before they started to define themselves as Hellenes versus Barbaroi (not-Greeks)āyet they didnāt always agree on the āedges.ā Itās not until late that we find Thessaly included at the Olympic games. Epiros was sorta-Greek, as they could claim Achilles, but both Epiros and Thessaly had semi-monarchic political systems not in line with accepted Greek norms (the polis). Macedon was even further afield, being a full-on monarchy. The Macedonian royal family claimed to be Greeks ruling over a non-Greek but cousin people; the (fictional) eponymous founder, Makedon, was a nephew of the equally fictional forefather of the Greeks: Hellen. The āGreeknessā of the royal family was also a fiction, invented by Alexander Iāin the wake of the Greco-Persians Wars, note.
Now, again, by modern criteria, weād probably consider the Macedonians blended but largely Greek. Yet itās important to recognize the difference between now and thenāsomething I get frustrated over in modern arguments. (Which can be quite strident.)
Anyway, itās during/after the Greco-Persian Wars that barbaros came to acquire a more negative connotation. In the Archaic Age, it was a neutral term. Barbaros simply meant ānon-Greek speakerā or āthe bar-bar peopleā (āthose whose language sounds like bar-bar-bar-bar to usā). Itās not complimentary, but itās also not as negative as it came to imply later.
Furthermore, in the Archaic Age, plenty of Greek men, including Athenians, married non-Greek womenāoften to cement business ties, especially in Asia Minor, Thrace, and Italy. In many city-states, these children were citizens if their father was. Itās only in a few city-states that both parents had to be citizens, such as Sparta and, later, Athens. These developments are either very late Archaic or Classical, in order to restrict citizen privileges.
IOW, even in Greece proper, marrying a Greek woman wasnāt important except in a few places, specifically to limit citizenship for economic reasons. Notions of ethnic purity as we understand it werenāt a thing. Yes, even in Sparta. Full Spartans excluded other Lakonians, who spoke the exact same language and kept the exact same religious cult. In short, all SpartiĆ”tÄs were Lakedaimonians (the city-state) and Lakonians (ethnicity), but not all Lakonians and Lakedaimonians were SpartiĆ”tÄs. E.g. SpartiĆ”tÄs were the aristocratic class. (The alt-right really needs to figure that out ā¦ except, yeah, they donāt want to as it would mess with their biases.)
When Herodotos included ābloodā in his famous definition of Greekness (to speak the Greek language, worship the Greek gods, keep Greek customs, have Greek bloodāand to live in a polis), ābloodā meant from DADDY. This relates a bit to ancient views that a mother was just a field to be plowed for male seed. Ergo, children inherited from their fathers. (This belief was not universal, especially later, but it informed early Greek thought, and thus, inheritance laws.)
NOW ā¦ Macedonia.
Macedonian kings practiced royal polygamy for political reasons. That means Alexander wasnāt the first to marry non-Macedonians. In fact, of Philipās 7 wives, only Kleopatra (the last) is *distinguished* as a Macedonian. Even Phila is called Elimeian (Upper Macedonian) by Statyrus. Olympias was Epirote (Greek), Philina and Nikesepolis were Thessalian (Greek), Audata was Illyrian (non-Greek), and Meda was Getai Thracian (non-Greek).
Was there objection to Philipās marrying the latter two? Our evidence doesnāt say. In the case of Audata, he may not have had a choice; marrying her was probably part of the peace deal with Bardyllis shortly after Philip came to the throne. Later, Meda was just āwife #6ā so itās unlikely anyone cared. Hooplah over Kleopatra as a āpureā Macedonian at their wedding was meant to diss Olympias, and thus, Alexander; it wasnāt a serious objection to Macedonian kings marrying non-Macedonian/Greek women. Especially as Epirote Olympias was Greek.
Things get even MORE complicated when we look at Alexanderās weddings. How much of the supposed objection to them is Macedonian, and how much from later Greek and Roman authorsā horror over āOrientalsā generally? Iād submit Curtiusās bitching about Roxana is very ROMAN. Plutarch turns it all into a love affair, but has his own reasons for that. Itās really hard to know what to make of complaints. Was his taking of Persian brides itself offensive, or just as part of his overall adoption of Persian dress and customs? Iām sure there was no collective āMacedonian attitudeā so much as various camps into which this or that solder fellāfrom strict Traditionalists like Kleitos through to Hephaistion, who is portrayed as supporting ATGās Persianizing.
Last, Iāll also submit another reason we find anxiety about āforeignā wives in our Alexander histories: Octavian whipping up Roman nationalist fear of Cleopatra (VII) and Antonyās marriage to her. Cleopatra became a stand-in for the Wicked Wild Oriental East and corruption of Good Roman Virtues. Sheās that āEgyptian womanā (yes, even though she was technically Greco-Macedonian). Caesar may have entertained an affair with her and nursed Alexander comparisons, but between Caesar and Octavian/Antony (in fact partly because of Caesar), Alexander imitatio had fallen out of favor and would stay so for a while in the early Republic.
Curtius would have been writing (we think; dating him is tricky) under the late Julio-Claudians. So yeah, them furrunā wimmen gotta be watched out for! Marrying Roxane was part of Alexanderās seduction by the East after the death of Darius. That Roxane was not a princess (like Statiera) made it even worse. She was a TRUE barbarian.
Add to that, polygamy wasnāt understood by either Greek or Roman writers. Plutarch tries to explain Philipās later marriage to Kleopatra as divorcing Olympias first (as does Justin) because Romans (and Greeks) used divorce. Polygamy was, to their minds, an eastern vice. So Alexander taking (unequivocably) three wives was oriental, proof of his corruption.
Hope this helps to contextualize what weāre looking at here, and the problems involved reading the sources.
If some Macedonians objected to Alexander marrying Roxane (and they probably did), it would have been because she wasnāt high-born enough for a (first) wife, and/or she was TOO foreign. But as that marriage got them out of Baktria/Sogdiana, it looked just like things Philip had done.
Later objections involved whether Roxaneās child should be accepted as heir over Arrhidaios. Thatās a different kettle of fish. Itās clear that status of the mother was important in Macedonian inheritance squabbles even before Alexander. While some Macedonians preferred the mentally unfit Arrhidaios over the child of any ācaptive,ā others did not. They wanted a son of Alexander.
So who he married mattered rather less than who was put forward to inherit the diadema.
---------------------------
* āGreekā is from the Latin Graecae, a specific Greek tribes, just like the Romans are a specific Latin tribe. The Romans just applied it to everybody on the peninsula. The Greeks called themselves āsons of Hellenā: Hellenes. The official name of the country even today is Hellas, not Greece. Hellen isnāt to be confused with the (feminine) Helen, btw. Hellen was a son of Deukalion, Helen the wife of Menelaus, and later mistress of Paris.
** For an excellent, if ratherā¦er, thick discussion, with lots (and I mean LOTS) of ancient evidence, see Jonathan Hallās Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, which addresses the question of when the ancient Greeks became āGreeks.ā
