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52-518: Roxana (dead 310 BC, Ancient Greek : Ῥωξάνη ; Old Iranian : *Raṷxšnā- "shining, radiant, brilliant") sometimes known as Roxanne , Roxanna and Roxane was a Sogdian or a Bactrian princess whom Alexander the Great married after defeating Darius , ruler of the Achaemenid Empire , and invading Persia. The exact date of her birth is unknown, but she was probably in her early teens at

104-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

156-525: A fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as

208-457: A political alliance. Alexander married Roxana despite opposition from his companions who would have preferred a Macedonian or other Greek to become queen. However, the marriage was also politically advantageous as it made the Sogdian army more loyal towards Alexander and less rebellious after their defeat. Alexander thereafter made an expedition into India and while there he appointed Oxyartes as

260-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

312-571: A result of intrigues started by Philip Arrhidaeus' wife, Eurydice II . Afterwards, Roxana and the young Alexander were protected by Alexander the Great's mother, Olympias , in Macedonia. Following Olympias' assassination in 316 BC, Cassander imprisoned Roxana and her son in the citadel of Amphipolis . Their detention was condemned by the Macedonian general Antigonus in 315 BC. In 311 BC, a peace treaty between Antigonus and Cassander confirmed

364-493: A sort of de facto regent. She may have spoken to the troops in military attire. She took an active part in the proceedings at the Treaty of Triparadisus in 321 BC. It was at this point, however, that a new adversary, Alexander the Great 's general Antipater , returned to the king's court and laid claim to the vacant regency. In an attempt to forestall this and retain command over the Macedonian army, Eurydice spoke in public to

416-542: A strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either

468-409: A sword, a rope, and a cup of hemlock , with orders to choose her mode of death. The spirit of Eurydice remained unbroken to the last; she still breathed defiance to Olympias, and prayed that she might soon be requited with the like gifts. Having given proper burial rite to her husband to the best of her ability, she put an end to her own life by hanging herself with her own girdle, without giving way to

520-482: A tear or word of lamentation. Some scholars use her murder to explain why the Macedonians betrayed Olympias. Her body was later removed by Cassander. In 316 BC, he organized a splendid funeral, complete with funeral games, for Eurydice, Philip, and Cynane, who had been killed six years earlier. Eurydice was interred, together with that of her husband, with at Aegae . In 1977, Manolis Andronikos discovered

572-432: A teenager, again bid for power: she demanded that the new regents of Macedon, Peithon and Arrhidaeus , grant her a share of the regency. Eurydice established herself as the representative of the legitimate line of succession, due to her descent from Philip II and Perdiccas and marriage to Philip III. Her ties to the Macedonian army, and her status as king's wife, helped her gain influence and succeeded briefly in becoming

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624-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

676-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

728-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

780-449: Is unlikely that she was born after 335 BCE. There are varying arguments surrounding Cynane's age and year of marriage, with the earliest possible year of Eurydice's birth being 342 BC. Eurydice's birth name was Adea. She was brought up by her mother Cynane. She accompanied her mother on her daring expedition to Asia to meet Alexander the Great 's troops after his death, with the hope of marrying Eurydice to Philip III. Although Cynane

832-679: The Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about

884-463: The Argead dynasty to an end. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ),

936-606: The Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek

988-518: The Great Tumuli and excavated the tombs there. Tomb II is generally considered to be the burial site of Philip II of Macedon and Cleopatra Eurydice of Macedon . However, certain scholars argue that it is actually the tomb of Eurydice and Philip III. This is supported by the presence of 4th century ceramic objects in the tomb and Asian architectural and artistic features in Tomb II suggesting

1040-545: The Metz Epitome it was in the house of Chorienes in which Roxana was introduced to Alexander as the daughter of Oxyartes. Curtius apparently misrepresented Roxana as a daughter of Chorienes. Arrian states that Oxyartes surrendered to Alexander when he became aware of the good reception Alexander awarded his daughter Roxana. A.B. Bosworth mentions the possibility of Roxana being captured at the Sogdian Rock, but that

1092-501: The Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

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1144-603: The epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between

1196-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

1248-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

1300-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

1352-652: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Eurydice II of Macedon The exact year of Eurydice's birth is unknown, but as her uncle Alexander the Great killed her father shortly after Philip II's assassination, it

1404-545: The Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for

1456-464: The Great's half-brother and successor to the throne of Macedon. Sources hint that this was an unequal marriage, because the king was disabled mentally. Furthermore, although Philip Arrhidaeus was king of Macedon, this did not make him the imperial successor to Alexander; Alexander had won his empire by law of conquest, and the Asian portion of the empire (more than nine-tenths of the whole) was not part of

1508-478: The Sogdian warlord Spitamenes , took up a defensive position in a fortress known as the Sogdian Rock . They were eventually defeated by Alexander, who attended a celebration, and reportedly fell in love with Roxana on sight. The location of the celebration took place is disputed, possibly in the Sogdian Rock or another fortress of Chorienes (also called Sisimithres by Quintus Rufus Curtius ), but according to

1560-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

1612-434: The assembled soldiery, who were restless due to Antipater's inability to pay them. Eurydice's speech failed; the Macedonian army decided in favor of Antipater, and the general was appointed regent and guardian of the king. Eurydice, once again relatively powerless, accompanied her husband and Antipater to Macedon. But the death of Antipater in 319 BC, the more feeble character of Polyperchon , who succeeded him as regent, and

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1664-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

1716-443: The daughter of the deposed Persian king Darius III . After Alexander's sudden death at Babylon in 323 BC, Roxana is believed to have murdered Stateira. According to Plutarch , she also had Stateira's sister, Drypetis , murdered with the consent of Perdiccas . Roxana was pregnant, which caused some discussions between Alexander's loyalists around Perdiccas and Ptolemy who suggested waiting to see if Alexander's posthumous child

1768-563: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

1820-530: The dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under

1872-510: The divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at

1924-453: The failure of his enterprises in Greece , and above all, the favourable disposition he evinced towards Olympias , determined her again to take an active part: she concluded an alliance with Cassander . In 317 BC, she deposed Polyperchon. It is possible that she appointed Cassander regent, but she often acted as regent herself. However, Polyperchon joined forces with Olympias. As Cassander

1976-654: The governor of the Hindu Kush region adjoining India. Roxana accompanied Alexander into India, where her first son died at or soon after birth near the banks of the Acesines River in November 326 BC. When Alexander returned to Susa in spring 324 BC, he promoted a brother of Roxana to the elite cavalry. To encourage a better acceptance of his government among the Persians, Alexander also married Stateira II ,

2028-414: The kingship of Alexander IV but also Cassander as his guardian, following which the Macedonians demanded his release. However, Cassander ordered Glaucias of Macedon to kill Alexander and Roxana. It is assumed that they were murdered in spring 310 BC, but their death was concealed until the summer. The two were killed after Heracles , a son of Alexander the Great's mistress Barsine , was murdered, bringing

2080-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

2132-435: The people of Macedon. Upon her marriage, Adea changed her name to Eurydice, possibly as a sort of royal title. This name references her maternal grandmother, Audata Eurydice , Philip II's mother, Eurydice I of Macedon , and Perdiccas's mother, reminding the Macedonians of her strong Argead heritage. The sources are again silent as to Eurydice during the life of Perdiccas. After his death in 321 BC, Eurydice, likely still

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2184-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

2236-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

2288-428: The time of her wedding. Roxana was born as the daughter of a Bactrian nobleman named Oxyartes , who served Bessus , the satrap of Bactria and Sogdia . He was thus probably also involved in the murder of the last Achaemenid king Darius III . After Bessus was captured by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great , Oxyartes and his family continued to resist the Macedonians, and, along with other notables such as

2340-467: The time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with

2392-455: The two married at the fortress of Chorienes. The marriage was in 327 BC, and according to the majority of the sources it was in the Macedonian rite rather than the Persian. The sources agree that Alexander fell passionately in love with her, but considering that he had difficulties in occupying and controlling Sogdiana his decision to marry Roxana may also have been motivated by the advantages of

2444-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

2496-452: Was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in

2548-437: Was a son and naming either a caretaker regent or a council to govern on his behalf, and the Macedonian soldiers who opposed a so-called persianization of the Macedonian court. For the Macedonian succession a temporary compromise was found as Philip Arrhidaeus was declared king of Macedon ; if the unborn child was a son, he was to become a king as well. By 317 though, Roxana's son, called Alexander IV lost his kingship as

2600-422: Was seized and made prisoner. She was at first confined, together with her husband, in a narrow dungeon, and scantily supplied with food; but soon Olympias, becoming alarmed at the compassion excited among the Macedonians, determined to get rid of her rival. Diodorus provides a dramatic– though perhaps historically inaccurate – narrative surrounding Eurydice's death. In it, Olympias sent the young queen in her prison

2652-506: Was still fighting in Peloponnese, Eurydice assembled an army and Polyperchon advanced against her from Epirus , accompanied by Aeacides , the king of that country, Olympias, Roxana and the young Alexander IV of Macedon . But the presence of Olympias was alone sufficient to decide the contest: the Macedonian troops refused to fight against the mother of Alexander the Great , and went over to her side. Eurydice fled to Amphipolis , but

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2704-401: Was successful in swaying the troops to follow her instead of Alcetas , either he or Perdiccas murdered her. However, the discontent expressed by the troops, and the respect with which they looked on Eurydice as one of the surviving members of the royal house, induced the imperial regent, Perdiccas , not only to spare her life, but to give her in marriage to King Philip Arrhidaeus , Alexander

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