Early Life
Stateira was the eldest daughter of Darius III of Persia and his wife, also named Stateira. Both of her parents were frequently described as handsome or beautiful, leading Tarn to speculate Stateira "was sufficiently good-looking, at any rate for a princess, to be called ... beautiful." Her birthdate is unknown; by 333 BCE she was of marriageable age. After Alexander the Great invaded Persia, Stateira and her family accompanied Darius' army. In November 333 Alexander's army defeated the Persians at the Battle of Issus. Darius fled, and the Macedonian army soon captured his family. Although many captured Persian women were treated brutally, under Alexander's orders Stateira, her mother, her sister Drypetis, her younger brother, and their paternal grandmother, Sisygambis, were treated well and allowed to retain their social status.
Read more about this topic: Stateira II
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)