Barsine

 ( Mistresses Of Alexander The Great ) 

Barsine (; c. 363–309 BC) was the daughter of a Persians father, Artabazus, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, and a Greeks Rhodes mother, the sister of mercenaries Mentor of Rhodes and Memnon of Rhodes.

Barsine became the wife of her uncle Mentor, and after his death married her second uncle, Memnon.

In 334 BC, the year of Alexander's invasion of Asia, she and her children were sent by Memnon to the king Darius III as hostages for his fidelity; and in the ensuing year, when Damascus was betrayed to the , she fell into the hands of Alexander, by whom it is said that she became the mother of Heracles.

Twelve years after Alexander's death in 323 BC, Barsine's son-in-law Nearchus unsuccessfully advocated for Heracles' claim to the throne, who was then seventeen, having been born about five years after Barsine and Alexander supposedly met in Damascus in 333 BC. From a comparison of the accounts of Diodorus Siculus and Justin, it appears that he was brought up at Pergamum under his mother's care, and that she shared his fate when in 309 BC Polyperchon was induced by Cassander to murder him. Barsine is sometimes confused with Stateira II, wife of Alexander, who also may have been called "Barsine".

---

Notes

Diodorus, Bibliotheca, xvii. 23, xx. 20, 28; Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni, iii. 13, x. 6; Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, , , xv. 2; Pausanias, Description of Greece, ix. 7

• Smith, William (editor); Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, , Boston, (1867)

Categories: Mistresses Of Alexander The Great, Phrygia, Iranian People Of Greek Descent, People Who Died Under The Regency Of Cassander, 4th-century Bc Women, 360s Bc Births, 309 Bc Deaths, Women From The Achaemenid Empire, 4th-century Bc Iranian People

Post Comment