Here at Susa He [Alexander] Held Wedding

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"Here at Susa he [Alexander] held wedding ceremonies for the high officers of the Hetaeri; he also took a wife himself - Barsine, Darius’ eldest daughter… He had already married Roxane, daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria…. Similarly, the other officers - eighty all together - were given young women of the noblest Persian and Median blood as their brides. The marriage ceremonies were in the Persian fashion: chairs were set for the bridegrooms in order of precedence, and when healths had been drunk, the brides entered and sat down by their bridegrooms, who took them by the hand and kissed them….. There proved to be over 10,000 other Macedonians who had married Asian women; Alexander had them all registered, and every man of them received a wedding gift…. Here in Susa, Alexander received … the governors of the territories he had previously overrun. They brought with them some 30,000 young fellows, all boys of the same age, all wearing the Macedonian battledress and trained on Macedonian lines. Alexander called them his Epigoni – ‘inheritors’- and it is said that their coming caused much bad feeling among the Macedonians, who felt it was an indication of his many efforts to lessen his dependence for the future upon his own countrymen. Already the sight of Alexander in Median clothes had caused them much distress, and most of them did not like the Persian marriage ceremonies…." -Arrian, from The Life of Alexander the Great .

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