After the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, Alexander the Great took possession of the enemy camp. Hearing sounds of mourning, he left his meal to assure the court of vanquished King Darius that their lord had escaped, and the following day paid a respectful visit to Darius’s mother. Doubting his self-restraint, he left Darius’s lovely queen, Statira, unmolested.

When Alexander and his friend Hephaestion presented themselves before Sisygambis, she made a desperate guess that the sterner and taller of the two must be the mighty King of Macedon. Hephaestion at once corrected her mistake, and such was Alexander’s gentle courtesy then and in the days that followed that she came to regard him as a son.

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