Roxanna (
Bactrian, Persian: Roshanak; Bactrian definition literally "luminous beauty" Persian definition "the dawn"), was a
Bactrian noble and a wife of
Alexander the Great. She was born earlier than the year
341 BC, though the precise date remains uncertain. She was the daughter of a Bactrian named
Oxyartes of
Balkh in Bactria (then eastern
Persia, now northern
Afghanistan), and married Alexander in
327 BC after he visited the fortress of
Sogdian Rock. Balkh was the last of the Persian Empire's provinces to fall to Alexander, and the marriage was an attempt to reconcile the Bactrian
satrapies to Alexander's rule, although ancient sources describe Alexander's professed love for her. Roxanna accompanied him on his campaign in
India in
326 BC. She bore him a posthumous son called
Alexander IV Aegus, after Alexander's sudden death at
Babylon in
323 BC. With the king's death, Roxanna and her son became victims of the political intrigues of the collapse of the Alexandrian empire. Roxanna murdered Alexander's other widow,
Stateira II, and Stateira's sister
Drypteis (Pl. Alex. 77.4). Roxanna and her son were protected by Alexander's mother,
Olympias, in
Macedon, but her assassination in
316 BC allowed
Cassander to seek kingship. Since Alexander IV Aegus was the legitimate heir to the Alexandrian empire, Cassander ordered him and Roxanna assassinated around
309 BC. 
