Dateline: Babylon,  30 June 323 BC
• “I’m having Alexander the Great’s baby–and you losers are not!” announced Roxane, outspoken daughter of a powerful Bactrian nobleman. Mrs. Great is one of several widows to whom the recently deceased world conquerer was married simultaneously.
• At her press conference this week, Roxane introduced other Alexandrine widows and mistresses invited to Babylon for a mass mourning get-together and baby shower. Most prominent among the attendees was Barstine, daughter of the late King Darius and Queen Statira of Persia. Young Barstine wed Alexander last year in the first-ever Guiness Book mass-marriage ceremony, along with 79 other Macedonian-Persian couples. Her mother Statira had also been one of Alexander’s earlier mistresses until her death in childbirth.
• In a bold attempt to share the limelight with co-wife Roxane, Barstine held a followup press conference at which she announced her own happy news of a stork on the way.

• At the already-somber baby shower that followed, Barstine and her sister Drypetis died suddenly while enjoying the hospitality of co-hosts Roxane and Perdiccas, Regent to Alexander’s unborn child. The co-hosts were quick to extend condolences to the family, as well as exchange mystified looks when the sisters’ bodies were found, inexplicably stuffed down a Babylonian well.

Mob scene as Alex, Barstine, 79 couples tie knot.

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