And every time that you were going to fall down prostrate before me, I only ask you, whether I would suffer it? As the highest testimony of the veneration I owe you, I always called you by the tender name of mother, though this belongs properly to Olympia only, to whom I owe my birth.” On hearing this Sisygambis was extremely well satisfied, and became afterwards so partial to the conqueror of her son and country, that when she heard of the death of Alexander she wept as if she had lost a son. “Who now will take care of my daughters?” she exclaimed. “Where shall we find another Alexander?” At last she sank under her grief. “This princess,” says Rollin, “who had borne with patience the death of her father, her husband, eighty of her brothers, who were murdered in one day by Ochus, and, to say all in one word, that of Darius her son, and the ruin of her family; though she had, I say, submitted patiently to all these losses, she however had not strength of mind sufficient to support herself after the death of Alexander. She would not take any sustenance, and starved herself to death, to avoid surviving this last calamity.” Alexander found in Susa all the captives of quality he had left there. He married Statira,[249] Darius’ eldest daughter, and gave the youngest to his dear Hephæstion. And in order that, by making these marriages more common, his own might not be censured, he persuaded the greatest noblemen in his court, and his principal favourites, to imitate him. Accordingly they chose, from amongst the noblest families of Persia, about eighty young maidens, whom they married. His design was, by these alliances, to cement so strongly the union of the two nations, that they should henceforward form but one, under his empire. The nuptials were solemnised after the Persian manner. He likewise feasted all the rest of the Macedonians who had married before in that country. It is related that there were nine thousand guests at this feast, and that he gave each of them a golden cup for the libations. When at Susa, Alexander found a proof of the misgovernment of which his satraps had been guilty during his absence. The Susians loudly complained of the satrap Abulites, and his son Oxathres, of spoliation and tyranny. Being convicted of the crimes of which they were charged, they were both sentenced to death.