Tiridates (eunuch) explained

Tiridates (xpr|, ; grc|Τιριδάτης,) was a eunuch in the court of the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II, described as "the most handsome and attractive man in Asia", and the king's lover.[1] [2] [3] He features in Claudius Aelianus's account of Artaxerxes, in his Varia Historia, but is absent in the accounts of a similar time frame of Xenophon and Plutarch.[4] [5] Scholars generally believe some of the later writers were referencing different, earlier accounts of events that are now lost.

The historian Claudius Aelianus wrote in his Varia Historia that Tiridates died young, "barely more than a child", and Artaxerxes was inconsolable at the loss.[6] [7] A favored concubine, Aspasia of Phocaea, soothed the king by consoling him while cross-dressing in Tiridates's clothing.[8] Artaxerxes asked her to visit him in Tiridates's clothing until his grief had been healed.[9] [10] [4] [11]

There was a different, unrelated Tiridates, also a eunuch, who was a royal treasurer at Perseopolis, who was asked to betray that city to Alexander the Great, but refused.[12]

Notes and References

  1. Book: Briant , Pierre . From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Eisenbrauns. 2002. 269. English. 9781575061207 .
  2. Book: Llewellyn-Jones. Lloyd . Robson. James. Ctesias' 'History of Persia': Tales of the Orient. Taylor & Francis. 2009. 164. English. 9781134220465 .
  3. Book: Romm , James . The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers and the Last Days of Greek Freedom. Scribner. 2022. 164–167. 9781501198021 .
  4. Book: Facella , Margherita . Campanile. Domitilla. Carlà-Uhink. Filippo . Facella. Margherita. 114–115. TransAntiquity: Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World. Beyond ritual: Cross-dressing between Greece and the Orient. Taylor & Francis. 2017. English. 9781317377375 .
  5. Book: Almagor , Eran . Plutarch and the Persica. Edinburgh University Press. 2018. 213. English. 9780748645565 .
  6. [Claudius Aelianus]
  7. Book: Briant , Pierre . Darius in the Shadow of Alexander. Harvard University Press. 2015. English. 9780674745209 .
  8. Book: Llewellyn-Jones , Lloyd . Tougher. Shaun. Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond. Eunuchs and the royal harem in Achaemenid Persia (559-331 BC). Classical Press of Wales. 2002. 35. English. 9781914535062 .
  9. Book: Stoneman , Richard . Xerxes: A Persian Life. Yale University Press. 2015. 183. English. 9780300216042 .
  10. Book: Smith , Steven D. . Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus. Cambridge University Press. 2014. 258. English. 9781139992466 .
  11. Book: Pervo , Richard I. . Hedrick. Charles W.. Shea. Chris. Brant. Jo-Ann A.. Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative. Die Entfuhrung in das Serail: Aspasia: A Female Aesop?. Society of Biblical Literature. 2005. 76. English. 9781589831667 .
  12. Encyclopedia: Heckel. Waldemar. Waldemar Heckel. Tiridates. Who's Who in the Age of Alexander and His Successors: From Chaironeia to Ipsos (338–301 BC). Greenhill Books. 2021. 9781784386498.

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