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 “ethnic” “Greek” element is not present
ALEXANDER & MARRIAGE
(and what was Greek “ethnicity”)
First, let me link to 2 other posts that deal with Alexander and marriage, but don’t address the ethnic element except obliquely.
Argead Inheritance and Alexander’s (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 Greeks—and regarded themselves—as 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, we’d 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 didn’t 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. That’s one of the first things I teach in my “Intro to Greek History” class. 😊 “Greece” (Hellas)* was simply a landmass. In fact, the ancient Greeks don’t appear to have referred to themselves as “Greek”—an ethnicity—until the Persian invasion.** Ethnicities were “Athenian,” “Spartan,” “Corinthian,” “Theban,” 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 won’t 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 didn’t include a lot of areas they’d have considered “Greek” (Hellene).
It took being invaded by a true “Other” (Persia) before they started to define themselves as Hellenes versus Barbaroi (not-Greeks)—yet they didn’t always agree on the “edges.” It’s 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 “Greekness” of the royal family was also a fiction, invented by Alexander I—in the wake of the Greco-Persians Wars, note.
Now, again, by modern criteria, we’d probably consider the Macedonians blended but largely Greek. Yet it’s important to recognize the difference between now and then—something I get frustrated over in modern arguments. (Which can be quite strident.)
Anyway, it’s 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 “non-Greek speaker” or “the bar-bar people” (“those whose language sounds like bar-bar-bar-bar to us”). It’s not complimentary, but it’s also not as negative as it came to imply later.
Furthermore, in the Archaic Age, plenty of Greek men, including Athenians, married non-Greek women—often to cement business ties, especially in Asia Minor, Thrace, and Italy. In many city-states, these children were citizens if their father was. It’s 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 wasn’t important except in a few places, specifically to limit citizenship for economic reasons. Notions of ethnic purity as we understand it weren’t 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 Spartiátēs were Lakedaimonians (the city-state) and Lakonians (ethnicity), but not all Lakonians and Lakedaimonians were Spartiátēs. E.g. Spartiátēs were the aristocratic class. (The alt-right really needs to figure that out … except, yeah, they don’t want to as it would mess with their biases.)
When Herodotos included “blood” in his famous definition of Greekness (to speak the Greek language, worship the Greek gods, keep Greek customs, have Greek blood—and to live in a polis), “blood” 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 … Macedonia.
Macedonian kings practiced royal polygamy for political reasons. That means Alexander wasn’t the first to marry non-Macedonians. In fact, of Philip’s 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 Philip’s marrying the latter two? Our evidence doesn’t 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 “wife #6” so it’s unlikely anyone cared. Hooplah over Kleopatra as a “pure” Macedonian at their wedding was meant to diss Olympias, and thus, Alexander; it wasn’t 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 Alexander’s weddings. How much of the supposed objection to them is Macedonian, and how much from later Greek and Roman authors’ horror over “Orientals” generally? I’d submit Curtius’s bitching about Roxana is very ROMAN. Plutarch turns it all into a love affair, but has his own reasons for that. It’s 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? I’m sure there was no collective “Macedonian attitude” so much as various camps into which this or that solder fell—from strict Traditionalists like Kleitos through to Hephaistion, who is portrayed as supporting ATG’s Persianizing.
Last, I’ll also submit another reason we find anxiety about “foreign” wives in our Alexander histories: Octavian whipping up Roman nationalist fear of Cleopatra (VII) and Antony’s marriage to her. Cleopatra became a stand-in for the Wicked Wild Oriental East and corruption of Good Roman Virtues. She’s that “Egyptian woman” (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 furrun’ wimmen gotta be watched out for! Marrying Roxane was part of Alexander’s 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 wasn’t understood by either Greek or Roman writers. Plutarch tries to explain Philip’s 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 we’re 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 wasn’t 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 Roxane’s child should be accepted as heir over Arrhidaios. That’s a different kettle of fish. It’s 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 “captive,” 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.
---------------------------
* “Greek” 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 “sons of Hellen”: Hellenes. The official name of the country even today is Hellas, not Greece. Hellen isn’t 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 rather…er, thick discussion, with lots (and I mean LOTS) of ancient evidence, see Jonathan Hall’s Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, which addresses the question of when the ancient Greeks became “Greeks.”
