Barsine

Barsine (Greek: Βαρσίνη; c. 363–309 BC) was daughter of a Persian father, Artabazus, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia and a Greek Rhodian mother, who was the sister of mercenaries Mentor of Rhodes and Memnon of Rhodes.[1] Barsine became the wife of her uncle Mentor, and after his death married her second uncle, Memnon.

Barsine
Claire Bloom as Barsine, and Richard Burton as Alexander the Great, in Alexander the Great (1956 film).
Born	363 BC
Died	309 BC
Known for	Mistress of Alexander the Great

Rhodes

Barsine was half-Rhodian Greek by her mother, and half-Persian by her father, the satrap Artabazos II.

In 334 BC, the year of Alexander's invasion of Asia, she and her children were sent by Memnon to the king Darius III as hostages for his fidelity; and in the ensuing year, when Damascus was betrayed to the Macedonians, she fell into the hands of Alexander, by whom it is argued that she became the mother of Heracles.

On Alexander's death in 323 a claim to the throne on this boy's behalf was unsuccessfully urged by Nearchus. From a comparison of the accounts of Diodorus and Justin, it appears that he was brought up at Pergamum under his mother's care, and that she shared his fate when in 309 BC Polyperchon was induced by Cassander to murder him.[2]

Barsine is sometimes confused with Stateira II, wife of Alexander, and who also may have been called "Barsine".[2]