Roxana

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Roxana is also the name of at least two U.S. cities, including Roxana, Alabama and Roxana, Illinois.

Roxana (in Bactrian Roshanak, lit. "little shiny star" or "light"), the Bactrian wife of Alexander the Great, was born earlier than the year 341 BC, although the precise date remains uncertain. She was the daughter of a nobleman named Oxyartes of Balkh in Bactria (then eastern Persia, now northern Afghanistan). She married Alexander in 327 BC after he captured her when the fortress of Sogdian Rock surrendered to him. Balkh was the last of the Persian Empire's provinces to fall to Alexander. The marriage was an attempt to reconcile the Bactrian satrapies to Alexander's rule, although ancient sources describe Alexander's professed love for her. Roxana 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, Roxana and her son became victims of the political intrigues of the collapse of the Alexandrian empire. Roxana murdered Alexander's other widow, Stateira, and Stateira's sister Drypteis (Pl. Alex. 77.4). Roxana 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 murdered him along with Roxana c. 309 BC.