Quintus Curtius recounts how Sisigambis "disowned" her son Darius III for his cowardice at Issus, and henceforth regarded Alexander as her son.  This account was followed by Mary Renault in The Persian Boy, despite her scepticism of Curtius in general.

However, I have a distinct recollection of reading a totally different account, which stated that she was bitter at Darius' death, and refused to receive Alexander for six months afterwards. To me this seemed a far more credible reaction for a mother. However, I haven't been able to find this story again.  I have hunted through Arrian for it but without success.

Does anyone else recognise it?

Hi Mike

It's a little unfair when modern scholars criticise Curtius's work since the lad himself admits at the very outset that he is compiling the accumulated lore surrounding Alexander and says straight up that it cannot all be true. Arrian, though later, claimed to rely on Ptolemy and Aristobulus and though this cannot be the complete truth either at least his omission of recounted personal contact and conversations between the protagonists suggests he chose, unlike Curtius, not to include stuff he reckoned had to be simply hearsay and legend that had grown up about the guy. There's still a lot of guff there, I imagine. But at least he tried.

Since these surviving accounts started receiving intense review in more modern times there has been much speculation regarding what lies "between the lines", and I assume it is from one or more of these speculative works that the "refusal to meet Alexander" originated. A much more plausible scenario, especially since her intervention over the fate of the Uxii is generally regarded as reliable, suggests a person retaining quite a lot of autonomy and power in the as yet undefeated territories but who also was prepared to act as vassal (or even captive) after Darius's defeat and wield influence within Alexander's area of control too. This would not have been a unique arrangement and suggests a deal had been negotiated to both their satisfaction, though in fact one where any grandiose gestures of newly acquired "familial solidarity" could well have scuppered things for both sides - suggesting an imperial union rather than a conquest when in fact the latter was still very much a work in progress and the intent was to permanently end the regime that had prevailed in the area before. I would tend therefore to side with Arrian and simply skip over all the claims of "mother/son" statements from either party - the truth is probably that she neither refused to see him or became his bosom buddy, but that lines of communication were left open so she could use whatever authority and respect she commanded to help keep the lad's new "empire" from falling apart from within, and for this role she received concessions, I assume, from Alexander (though probably little more than that).

It would have been nice if we weren't forced these days to view the guy via such Roman prisms of empire and imperialism - the original Greek accounts, had they survived, might well have nipped most of these most romantic and dramatic interpretations of Alexander in the bud, leaving us with a rather sociopathic and inept ruler to consider and one easier therefore to understand as someone very likely distrusted and probably even despised in the main by his contemporary peers rather than the "golden boy" the Romans certainly chose to "large up" for their own reasons later.

I've just checked my Robin Lane Fox biography of Alexander - it was the definitive bio of the lad back in the 70s - and he certainly says that Sisigambis refused to entertain Alexander despite popular legend and that he bases this on Arrian and others who pointedly refute the legend and concentrate on fact. This is a bold claim for Arrian by Lane Fox, and in fact is probably over-interpreting Arrian's omissions, but this is what I reckoned when I mentioned speculative histories of recent publication. Lane Fox still however mentions the alternative versions too and leaves one to make one's own mind up, so I doubt that's the work you were thinking of, Mike. And the source references don't help either - referring as they do to Michele Barbi's book on philology and how to deduce veracity, as well as Arrian's book, as his reference point for the "refusal to see Alexander". Barbi's book simply mentions that classical accounts of Alexander highlight the requirement to examine the context of the biographer as much as the content of their claims. Arrian's book, as you suggest, simply does not mention this refusal as having occurred in the manner you referred to. So if Lane Fox saw it writen somewhere specifically he chose either not to rate it as meriting the status of a source, or else discounted it as speculation based on the very same sources as he used himself with which he could agree but which held no scholarly precedence over his own. If you ever find the work that states this as having definitely occurred (or most likely to have occurred) let us know - I like to maintain lists of unreliable authors to save me time if I'm ever referred to them again over something else.

If Alexander's reputation really were down to Roman flatterers, that would be ironic, given that had he lived another decade or so, there probably wouldn't have been a Rome (or a Carthage either) as neither could have stood against him at that time.

Very true. But for some probably not so unfathomable reason he proved very popular with certain emperors. When these guys commissioned histories to be written the poor historian was left with something of a Hobson's choice. Some emperors liked the cult aspect to the lad and wanted the histories to draw as many comparisons with their own claims to cultish divinity as was possible and let "actual history" be damned in the process, others (such as Arrian's Hadrian) liked the lad's all-conquering military prowess, his ability to play tribes against each other as easily as simply flattening them when necessary, the unquestioing devotion to him on the part of conquered and ally alike, and his intellectual pretensions (whether real or later ascribed to him). Either way the historian had better write the correct version, and if it was flattering (as it normally had to be) it wasn't therefore really Alexander who was being flattered, if you know what I mean.