Tiridates (eunuch)

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]