Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Despite the omnipresence of violence in the histories of Alexander, Timocleia’s murder of her rapist at Thebes, the unnamed wife of Spitamenes’s murder of her husband, and Thaîs’s incitement of the destruction of Persepolis, have received little attention as three examples of female violence. This paper juxtaposes these three incidents against the evidence for widespread sexual assault that likely accompanied Alexander’s campaigns, arguing that these episodes rhetorically divorce Alexander from that violence by making him the arbiter of good kingship even as they underscore the types of violence of which these women were victims.
Author: Joshua Nudell
Institution: Truman State University
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7223694407