18. Amastrine outlived her husband to become one of the earliest sole female rulers, before being drowned by her sons
Amastrine (b. date unknown) was a Persian princess, the daughter of Oxyathres and the brother of the Persian King Darius III. Given in marriage to Craterus by Alexander the Great, her betrothed decided to marry another woman and in turn arranged for Amastrine to marry Dionysius, the tyrant of Heraclea Pontica; Amastrine and Dionysius were married at Bithynia in 332 BCE, and as wife, she bore him two sons: Clearchus II and Oxyathres.
After the death of Dionysius in 306 BCE, Amastrine became the sole guardian of their children. Remarrying in 302 BCE to Lysimachus, the short-lived marriage rapidly broke apart and Amastrine returned to Heraclea to govern the city in her own name. An effective ruler by surviving historical accounts, as ruler of Heraclea Amastrine oversaw the creation of Amastris through the amalgamation of Sesamus, Cromna, Cytorus, and Tium, a city later described by Roman Governor Pliny the Younger in 110 CE as “a handsome city” of great value.
However, despite her independent rise to unprecedented power for a woman of her time, Amastrine was drowned by her two sons in 284 BCE. In spite of their unsuccessful marriage, Lysimachus avenged the death of his former wife by executing both Clearchus and Oxyathres and assuming control of Heraclea.