#cleophis

[pollyj]

"Diodorus recorded the strength of the Aśvaka opposition, noting that the women took up arms along with the men, preferring "a glorious death to a life of dishonour". Queen Cleophis was the main leader of Ashvaka during their war against Alexander.

Cleophis (Sanskrit: Kripa ) was a ruler and key figure in the war between the Ashvaka people and Alexander the Great. Cleophis was the mother of Assacanus, the Ashvaka's war-leader at the time of Alexander's invasion in 326 BCE. After her son's death in battle, Cleophis assumed command and negotiated a settlement that allowed her to retain her status.

The Ashvaka (from the word Ashva, meaning "horse" in Sanskrit, called Assacani in Greek) were an independent people who lived in parts of what is now the Swat and Buner valleys in modern-day Pakistan. These highlanders were rebellious, fiercely independent clans who resisted subjugation."

[blogdemocratesjr]

Family of Shiva & Dattatreya by Raja Ravi Varma

He next proceeded to the Daedalian mountains,and the dominions of Queen Cleophis; who, after surrendering to Alexander, recovered her throne from him by admitting him to her bed; saving by her charms what she had been unable to secure by her valor. A son whom she had by him, she named Alexander; and he afterwards sat upon the throne of the Indians.

—Justin, 12.7.10

See previous posts: Cleophis of Massaga & Queen Cleophis Offers Alexander the Great Wine after Conquering Massaga

[jeannereames]

Have you written at all about Queen Cleophis? Love your blog

The Legend of Queen Cleophis

The story of Cleophis (Kripa) fits into a particular trope of “clement Alexander” that we find in the vulgate biographies. When suitably high-born rulers admit defeat and sue for pardon, he graciously gives it. Porus would be another example. The story additionally fits the trope of ATG showing compassion to high-born women. Examples range from Timoklea of Thebes, to Ada of Caria, to the royal women of Darius.

So how likely is it?

Alexander faced tough resistance in the east from what’s today Pakistan down into SW India. Although Persia had sometimes controlled those areas, it was always loose, and most had broken away, considering themselves independent kingdoms. They wanted no overlord. The area called Aśvaka (Assacani) was among them. Apparently known for breeding warhorses, they were fairly militarily minded and resisted with a sizeable (for the region) army. They even managed to wound Alexander himself. This is the region of the famous Aornos Rock adventure, where ATG had to best Herakles—before he gets to Taxila.

Yet like Porus against Alexander later, they just didn’t have the numbers. So, despite utilizing some good defensive fortresses, the Macedonians had the upper hand, and Alexander eventually killed their (young?) king, Assacanus. His mother, Cleophis, stepped in to lead the resistance. Diodoros tells us (with predictable Greek astonishment) that even the women took up arms to fight(!)—but he doesn’t mention Cleophis.

According to the Roman authors, Curtius and Justin, and the Metz Epitome, Cleophis finally decided they just couldn’t win and surrendered. Alexander supposedly received this courteously and gave her back her kingdom. According to Curtius, this owed to her beauty and charm, but the ever-lurid Justin says she slept with him for it. In any case, even Curtius agrees she later gave birth to a son she named Alexander. The Metz Epitome doesn’t mention a baby.

So, here are our four vulgate authors: Diodoros, Curtius, Justin, Metz Epitome. Of these, all mention the campaign. Diodoros doesn’t mention Cleophis but the other three do. The Metz Epitome names her, but mentions nothing of an affair or child. Curtius mentions a child named after Alexander, but denies the affair. Justin makes ATG the father of the baby. So you can kinda see how the legend grew.

Along with a number of other historians, I’m inclined to view Cleophis as a bit of (Roman) historical fiction. Let’s look at what really happened (insofar as we can guess).

After his time in Baktria, ATG was done, and began to utilize ever-more harsh punishments in an effort to deter rebellion. Unsurprisingly, it had the opposite effect. Alexander’s campaigns in India (which includes what we call Pakistan) were brutal. Returning to Dodoros, who described the campaign, when the Assacanians did finally surrender under oaths, Alexander had the men surrounded and butchered. At their protest that he was breaking sacred oaths, he said he’d only promised them a safe exit from the city, not that he’d leave them alone after. It’s during this butchery that Diodoros describes the bravery of the women. ATG did let the (surviving) women and non-combatants live, but killed everyone of fighting age. It’s a stark contrast to how he’d operated earlier, where surrendering populations were well treated.

Yet that had been before he beat Darius at Gaugamela, or shortly after. Offering great terms for surrender got people on his side. Once he’s King of Asia, he sees these as “his” people, so it’s insurgency. Of course they don’t see it that way, but it’s why he changed tactics. (There were some exceptions in India, but overall, it was a very bloody march down the river.)

Given the ruthlessness of what Diodoros and Curtius (and Justin and the Metz Epitome) tell us occurred, the notion that Cleophis either invited an affair with ATG or later named a son (his or not) in his honor? I find that absurd. If she existed at all, it’s much more likely Alexander gave her back her kingdom because he’d killed everyone who could fight, and she was just a woman. He didn’t see her as a threat.

Did Roman authors, or Kleitarchos earlier, use a shadowy figure to create another “clement Alexander takes pity on a beautiful high-born woman” story? This is, btw, why I spelled her name in Latin fashion: I think she’s a Roman invention. Or at least, the vast bulk of her story is. I’m of mixed mind as to whether she’ll show up in my novels when I get to India. Certainly she won’t in the way she does for Curtius and Justin, but having a name/face to put on resistance is useful. If I do write about her, she’ll be Kripa, not Cleophis.

[becarefuloflove]

Question

What was the fucking point of Cleophis’ betrayal? 

Like yeah, Clary told her about the runes, but Valentine already knows Clary has angel blood in her, he’s the one that freaking fed it to her while Jocelyn was pregnant??

On another note, though I never doubted her, I’m glad Izzy won’t be dying from yin fen withdrawal any time soon. F*ck Aldertree. 

[jeannereames]

Why does it seem implausible that ATG would've had an affair with Cleophis? 1.) It was socially acceptable for Macedonian kings to practice polygamy (Carney). 2.) ATG had an affair with Thaelestris simply because she was royalty (like Cleophis) and asked nicely. 3.) He had a keen interest in getting to know other cultures. & 4.) He married Stateira II after Roxy. - Though I admire Rufus, I'm with Justin on this one.

Alexander's Purported Affairs (Kleophais, et al.)

This isn’t about whether he would/could have slept with these women—of course he could—but whether these events even occurred, or these women existed. THAT’S the problem/question.

You bring up Thaelestris, Queen of the Amazons. But the Thaelestris episode never happened. There’s a funny story of Onesikritos reading his history of Alexander for King Lysimachos of Thrace, many years after ATG died. Lysimachos, of course, was one of Alexander’s close friends/advisors. When Onesikritos got to the story of the Amazons, Lysimachos broke up laughing and asked, “Where was I when this happened?” (Plut. Alex. 46, for a breakdown of the episode and why he and others dismiss it. Onesikritos was recognized even in antiquity as full of shit; he lied about a lot of things, including his own importance in the campaign.)

There was no incident with the Amazons. It’s fiction. And it’s stories like that one which caused earlier generations of historians to distrust the vulgate altogether. If we can hardly jettison all the vulgate, or accept all of Arrian (or Plutarch), episodes like Alexander’s dalliance with the Amazon queen are pretty easy to tag as fabrication—recognized as such even in antiquity.

The incident with Kleophis is, perhaps, less clearly fiction. There was probably such a person. The problem with the story is the mismatch between the atrocious things Alexander did to her people, and her (supposed) behavior towards him afterwards. Not only did he kill her son, albeit in combat, but when the warriors and people of the city of Masaga surrendered, he promised to let them leave…then surrounded and butchered them all once they’d done so. As they were screaming in protest, he said he’d only promised they could leave peacefully, not that he’d let them live afterwards. It’s one of the most inhumane, deceptive things in his entire campaign, made perhaps worse when compared to his earlier treatment of suppliants. If we see glimpses of that brutality from Alexander after Thebes, Granikos (Greek mercenaries), Tyre, the Branchidai...treatment of Porus after the Battle of the Hydaspes aside, Alexander’s march through Pakistan and India was over-the-top horrific.

So I could see Kleophis admitting him to her bed if she thought it necessary to placate him so the rest of the Assakani could live, and he’d go away. But this tale of her having his kid and (months after he’d left) naming it after him, or naming a new son (whoever was the father) after him? That reads like Roman colonial narrative. “Yes, master, thank you for conquering us!” I just don’t find it credible.

[blogdemocratesjr]

Apsara by Dun Huang + The Greek World in the Fourth Century: From the Fall of the Athenian Empire to the Successors of Alexander by Lawrence A. Tritle (pp.210–211)

[Note the similarity between Assacenus and Ascanius, Aeneas’ son.]

[blogdemocratesjr]

Three Women Riding a Mythical Monster by Nikolay Kalmakov

Then the queen [Cleophis] came with a group of ladies of noble birth who made libations from golden bowls. The queen herself placed her little son at Alexander’s knees, and from him gained not only a pardon but also the restitution of her former status, for she retained the title of queen. Some have held the belief that it was the queen’s beauty rather than Alexander’s compassionate nature that won her this, and it is a fact that she subsequently bore a son who was named Alexander, whoever his father was.

—Rufus, The History of Alexander (Penguin Classics, p.201)

When, after the period of kamaloka, the human being lays aside his astral body as a third corpse, everything upon which the ego has not yet worked separates from him. But in the astral world there remains behind something like a web, consisting of whatever hindrances to evolution he has himself brought into the world. The human being himself paves his path through the world with all the forms that are evidence that he has caused injury of some kind to others. If the human being concerned has completed the development of his archetype in Devachan and has woven into it everything that came with him from the last incarnation as the extract of his etheric body, a kind of fecundation now takes place. The archetype is permeated by the web of its own unrequited deeds. Thus, the first thing that happens to the soul after it has reached maturity in Devachan is that it is permeated with what we call karma, and this gives it the impulse to descend again to the earth in order to make compensation for as much as possible of the harm previously caused. At the end of the period in Devachan the soul is permeated with the consequences of its own deeds. Not until then is there complete readiness for the descent into a new existence on earth.

—Rudolf Steiner, Rosicrucian Esotericism

See also The Twelve Senses, Forces & World Views