After Alexander's conquest of Persia, he did capture more than 10,000 Persian noblewomen, most of whom he divided among his warriors.
Alexander's purpose was clear: to consolidate his rule over the Persian lands, to further assimilate the nations, and to Hellenize the whole of Central Asia. And the reason for his doing so has to start with how Alexander the Great rose to prominence.
Let's introduce Alexander, one of the few military wizards in Greek history, and even in the history of the whole world, and is considered one of the four greatest military commanders in the ancient history of Europe.
He was the son of King Philip II of Macedon, born in Pella, the capital of the Macedonian kingdom, to Aristotle, one of the most famous philosophers in the history of human philosophy, so Alexander himself received a good education at a very young age.
And he was born in a turbulent era, following his father in the northern and southern wars, and at the age of 16 he led his troops to suppress the peasant uprising in northern Macedonia and consolidate the rule of the entire kingdom.
At the age of 20, Alexander's father, Philip II, was assassinated by his own bodyguard, Pasanias, and Alexander, with the support of his army commander Antipater, became the new king.
At the beginning of his rise to power, he won the support of the people of the whole country by reducing private taxes and became a well-deserved king of Macedonia, but this was only the beginning of his brilliant life.
In the autumn of 336 BCE, Alexander the Great convened an alliance in Corinth, Greece, consolidating the strategic superiority of the Macedonian kingdom throughout Greece and leading a coalition of Greek city-states to begin a crusade against Persia.
The reason for the Emperor's initial crusade against Persia was actually to gain the support of the whole of Greece, and as a brilliant politician and military strategist, he knew that it was impossible to gain the support of the people in the true sense of the word through killing and brutal suppression, so this eloquent monarch set his sights on Persia, Greece's old enemy.
Greece and Persia were already hostile in the 6th century, and several wars broke out between the two countries, including in 481 BC, when King Xerxes I of Persia nearly conquered all of Greece in the Second Greco-Persian War. Despite his ultimate success, Xerxes I razed most of Greece to the ground.
The Acropolis, which was the spiritual belief of many Greeks, was burned by the Persian monarch in 480 BC, so the hatred between Greece and Persia has a deep history. Alexander, also in the name of liberating the Greek city-states of Asia Minor and avenging the entire Greek civilization, succeeded in uniting the power of the Greek city-states world.
Although the purpose of Alexander's crusade was to avenge the Persian crusade, it was to unite the Greek city-states, consolidate his rule, and at the same time strive for the interests of the Macedonian military nobles.
I am afraid that Alexander himself did not expect to be able to achieve a groundbreaking victory in this Greco-Persian war. You must know that when he led the coalition of Greek city-states across the Dardanelles, the entire Macedonian kingdom was on the verge of financial bankruptcy, and he himself began this legendary expedition with less than 30 days of supplies.
At the very beginning of the expedition, Alexander won an unbelievable military victory, and most of the city-states in Asia Minor did not resist his army and basically surrendered, and Alexander the Great's attitude towards these city-states was to allow them to maintain their autonomy and not even pay taxes to the Greek coalition and the Macedonian kingdom.
This really promoted his legendary crusade to a certain extent, and also laid the foundation for him to later build a large Alexander empire. However, the loose governance structure has also caused the whole country to be in crisis.
In November 333 BC, Alexander and the then Persian king Darius III fought near the city of Issus, and the main Persian army led by Darius III was basically wiped out in this legendary battle, and the centuries-old Persian Empire was basically unable to resist.
In 330 BC, the then king of Persia, Darius III, was killed by Besòs, the governor of Bactilea. The death of Darius III also represented the complete end of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia that had begun in 550 BC.
After the destruction of the great enemy of Persia, Alexander had already conquered a very large territory. From Greece, he conquered the Anatolian Peninsula and ruled Egypt, extending the empire from Macedonia to present-day Iran.
However, Alexander's policy of national city-state autonomy made the empire more like a loose confederation, and the city-states within the empire enjoyed great financial, diplomatic, and military autonomy.
The lands of the Persian Empire that he had just conquered were particularly unstable, and although these Persians were afraid of the military might of the Macedonian legions led by Alexander the Great, they had their own national culture and religious beliefs, which were completely opposed to the cultural traditions of Greece. Without the policy of assimilation and the city-state of Greece, the empire maintained by Alexander the Great by force would never have lasted long.
So in 324 BCE, Alexander held a banquet in the Persian city of Susa, and brought more than 10,000 wives and daughters of Persian nobles to the banquet, and then he ordered his soldiers and officers to marry the wives and daughters of these Persian nobles, and he himself married the daughter of Darius III, the last king of the Achaemenid dynasty, thus proving that he was the rightful successor of the entire Persian Empire.
So these captured female prisoners ended up marrying Macedonia or other Greek city-states brought by Alexander the Great as part of Alexander's policy of assimilation.
It's just a pity that in June of 323 BC, this great military strategist and strategist died of a sudden illness at the age of 33, and he didn't even have time to leave a legitimate successor to the vast empire he had built. And this empire, which was itself barely glued together by Alexander's personal prestige and military means, also fell apart soon after his death.
It was only in 301 BC that in the course of the civil war in Alexander's empire there were three victors, Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Antigonus, who inherited the legacy of Alexander the Great and began widespread Hellenism in Central Asia. And Alexander's historical achievements are forever engraved in the history books of mankind.