Would Alexander have agreed to a proposal to procreate with a warrior queen.? Alexander (and his men) had known many Amazon-like women of intelligence, ambition, and power in the Macedonian court. Alexander’s grandfather Philip I had Scythian wives, and his father, Philip II, had married Audata, the daughter of the Dardanian ruler of Illyria, in 359 BC. As noted earlier, Illyrian women were riders, hunters, and warriors like the men (and Illyrian men and women were tattooed like the Thracians; chapter 6). While young Alexander and his male companions were learning horsemanship, hunting, and fighting, Audata made sure that his half sister Cynna (or Cynnane, b. 358 BC) excelled in the very same skills. Like Alexander, Cynna became a military commander in her own right. In about 343 BC, young Cynna led an army against an Illyrian force; she personally slew many Illyrians and killed their queen Caeria with a blow to the throat. Cynna (“Little Bitch”) was widowed when she was about twenty-one and never remarried. She trained her only daughter, Adea, to be a warrior too (Adea was born ca. 337 BC, when Alexander was about nineteen).16
Alexander and his men had also met strong-willed women in Darius’s Persian court and along his route to India. Alexander dreamed of creating a vast melting-pot empire, a fusing of cultures through marriage alliances and offspring of mixed parentage. In a speech recorded by Curtius, Alexander declared that he had married Darius’s Persian daughter Stateira and the Baktrian princess Roxane expressly to beget children and thereby to “abolish all distinction between vanquished and victor.” We know from several sources that Alexander encouraged tens of thousands of his men to marry the barbarian women with whom they cohabited and had children on the long campaign. These mixed families traveled with his army. Alexander anticipated training their Greek-barbarian sons as soldiers to be known as “The Descendants.” The independent barbarian queen Thalestris, the bravest of women (and with a sexual agenda of her own), could have been considered an ideal mother of Alexander’s heir.17
A MOTE ON TEE ML
How would Thalestris and Alexander have communicated.? The sources agree that Thalestris made her intentions very clear. It is amusing to picture the haughty queen conveying her desire with gestures and body language and Alexander agreeing in kind, conversing like the Scythian men and the Amazons in Herodotus’s love story of the Sarmatians (chapter 3). But Diodorus emphasized the “dignity” of the women, and earthy gestures might have been unseemly. We don’t know what language these Amazons spoke, but the queen’s request was likely spelled out through interpreters, as occurred with the Mardians, above. Once alone in their royal tent, of course, there was no need for words.
What really happened more than twenty-three hundred years ago is obscured by time. As long as we recognize that we are speculating about a potentially historical event, at a certain place in time, involving a real person who later assumed mythic proportions, we might for a moment permit ourselves the perspective of a moth on the wall of the lovers’ silken tent. Alexander decided to “pause here for thirteen days to fulfill Thalestris’s quest” writes Justin, so we can guess that these late summer days in Hyrcania were spent in leisure, and that the Macedonian soldiers were free to enjoy the company of the queen’s entourage. Alexander often relaxed by riding horses and chasing rabbits with his friends. Scythian women enjoyed the very same pursuits, so Thalestris would make a superb hunting companion.
Strabo and other Greek writers insisted that sex with Amazons invariably took place outdoors, so we might imagine Thalestris enticing Alexander in some secluded grove while their horses grazed nearby. After such pleasantly strenuous days, back in camp we might picture Thalestris setting aside her dagger and hanging up her quiver. She unpacks a small felt tent and brazier, and introduces the world conqueror to the delights of a purifying sauna enhanced with burning hemp flowers (easily obtained on her journey along the western Caspian; see Chapter 9). In the intoxicating haze, the naked Alexander watches the Amazon disrobe.
Later, lounging on their bed by the light of an oil lamp, he breathes the exotic fragrance of her frankincense and cedar perfume. As they sip from their wine cups, he traces with his finger the thirteen tattoos of deer with flowing antlers, lithe panthers, and griffins curling around her arms. If only she could speak Greek, this ravishing Scheherazade of the steppes might whisper entrancing stories about each fantastic creature, one tale for each night of passion. . . . And here our spying moth flutters away into the starry Hyrcanian night.
World History
