Ancient Parthian eunuch and favored of Artaxerxes II
Tiridates (Parthian: 𐭕𐭉𐭓𐭉𐭃𐭕, Tīridāt; Ancient Greek: Τιριδάτης, Tiridátes) 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.[6]
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.[7][8] A favored concubine, Aspasia of Phocaea, soothed the king by consoling him while cross-dressing in Tiridates's clothing.[9] Artaxerxes asked her to visit him in Tiridates's clothing until his grief had been healed.[10][1][11][4][6]
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]
^Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd (2002). "Eunuchs and the royal harem in Achaemenid Persia (559-331 BC)". In Tougher, Shaun (ed.). Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond. Classical Press of Wales. p. 35. ISBN9781914535062.