#Hephaistion my beloved

[ladyinbooks]

So at any given point (in any given day), you can usually find me thinking about Hephaistion Amyntoros. (Yes, I'm a Classicist. Yes, I have favourites, ok?)

I recently made the choice to watch Netflix's Alexander the Great docudrama, and while I have a lot of Thoughts on it (let's not get me started on the cutesy nicknames, because I'm still gnashing my teeth), I did have a good laugh at the fact some reviewers are getting themselves in an absolute twist over the fact that Alexander might have - gasp! - been in love with Hephaistion! (I feel like we're reliving 2004, and the legendary threat by a group of Greek lawyers to sue Oliver Stone over this exact same thing...). The whole Alexander/Hephaistion thing is not...new. At all. I am not sure why this is apparently a surprise.

(Like, it's 2024 and we're still really ignoring Diogenes and his little dig to Alexander about Hephaistion's thighs, huh?*)

Personally, I take far more issue with not letting Hephaistion be seen as competent in documentaries/dramas. Let him be his awesome self! He was out there running logistics, enacting diplomacy, getting the army fed and watered and running Alexander's empire (not on his own, but he achieved the highest ranking office the year before his death and he got it because he was darn good at what he did). Hephaistion was capable. Eminently capable. He had politicians and philosophers writing to him, and yes the likelihood was they did so because he had the ear of the king, but the reason he had that ear at all was because the king trusted him to handle those issues well.

So let's give the man his dues please. (And if you'd like more info on any of this, I'd wholeheartedly suggest picking up any of the research done by Dr Jeanne Reames, who examines Hephaistion and his role beautifully.)

*Yes, I know, that source is unreliable - ssh, let me have this

[dandelionfool]

doodling al'skander when i should be sleeping because i have not recovered from the effects of the persian boy

[jeannereames]

Hello Dr. Reames I hope you’re doing well

I have a question. I was reading everything you’ve written on your blog about alexander and hephaistion and in a post you mentioned that as alex and hephaistion became older their relationship became more complicated. Could you expand more on what you mean by that? In what ways did it become complicated?

Why Alexander and Hephaistion as Lovers as Adults was “Complicated”

I’m not entirely sure whether the asker means the historical people, or the characters in my novel, so I’ll answer for both, as the answer is somewhat the same, but in the book, I can add more specificity. One must be more circumspect about the historical people.

First, if they were never lovers (the historical people), then the only complication would have been Alexander’s increasing power. No matter how much freedom Hephaistion had, the murder of Kleitos showed that a drunk, furious Alexander could do terrible things, even to people he considered like family. As ATG aged, he had more cause for anger, and he also drank more.* So there was that.

But returning to the question of whether they were lovers, my colleague Sabine Müller doesn’t think they were—largely because she believes they met as adults. And THAT gets to the heart of why—if they were lovers—their relationship would have become more complicated across time. They aged.

The Greeks placed homoerotic attachments among the stages of life. A preteen/young teen was the beloved, or pursued partner (eromenos). Once he got a beard, post 18-ish (e.g., ephebe age), then one became the lover, or pursuer (erastes). Any relationship one had previously enjoyed with an older lover was expected to transmute into very close friendship/affection. Then, around the late 20s/early 30s, one would settle down and get married. It was still all right to chase younger boys, but only for a little while. Doing it too long earned “dirty old man” status, although we have evidence of older (40+, even 50+) elite men doing just that. Also, males of any age could pursue affairs with hetairai and other prostitutes (male or female), as well as with slaves of any age.

Two adult men still “carrying on” as if they were teens/young men was considered unseemly. By the time both were past 20, and certainly past 25, they shouldn’t still be having sex with each other. Although if they’d been long-time lovers as youths, they might get nods for loyalty (v. the playwright Agathon and his long-time lover, Pausanias) … and friends didn’t ask what they did behind closed doors. But this was easier to pull off as a slightly counter-culture artist playwright than a king and his increasingly important marshal.

So that’s why Alexander and Hephaistion would have experienced complications as they aged—assuming they stayed lovers. And they may not have. Even if, as youths, they were lovers, as adults, they could each have moved on. Curtius names other youths (not just Bagoas) with whom Alexander might have had a fling. It’s subtle in the text, but the Latin word used could imply something. We don’t have similar attestations for Hephaistion, but I wouldn’t expect us to, so that’s meaningless. Remember, our histories are laser-focused on Alexander, with details about other marshals appearing only if/when they matter to the main story. So, we have the name of Philotas’ mistress only because she became Krateros’ source for dirt on what Philotas said about Alexander as pillow talk. If not for that, we wouldn’t even know he had a mistress. Ergo, we MUST assume there’s a lot of information about the men in high positions around Alexander that our sources simply don’t relate (and perhaps didn’t know).

Now, in terms of Dancing with the Lion, the age thing very much is the problem, as Hephaistion is the elder but Alexandros king. They can continue a relationship for a short while (a few years), but AS KING, Alexandros would be assumed to be the “active” partner (erastes), and that would damage Hephaistion’s reputation—because he’s older (and was originally the erastes). For an older male to accept the passive role (bottoming) was demeaning, making himself “like a woman.”

That’s why the penultimate scene in Dancing with the Lion: Rise is so important! Hephaistion “flips the script,” explaining why he considers bottoming the position of power—startling Alexandros, who never thought about it that way.

Going forward, their friends will ignore any continuation and not examine it too closely due to respect for their loyalty to each other. But this works only for a little while. After Granikos and leading up to Issos, the pressure is on for Alexandros to find a nice girl to make his mistress and move Hephaistion into the role of Older Friend (without benefits)—which he does with Barsine. Yet I don’t plan to have them entirely give up their romantic liaison, so that requires concealment for Hephaistion’s benefit. And it’s not fully successful. Some push back against Hephaistion by enemies does owe to disrespect for his “preferences.”

But keep in mind, I’m speaking now of the fictional characters, not necessarily the historical people. My Hephaistion is pretty high on the Kinsey Scale, in the 5-6 range. Keeping the respect needed to command successfully as his political star rises means he must wear a mask, or find a beard, to use slang. One of the (several) points behind my series is to show it wasn’t necessarily any easier to be gay in “tolerant” ancient Greece. It was just difficult in different ways.

———————

* Before anyone asks, no I don’t think Alexander was an alcoholic, even a “functional” one. There’s literally not enough evidence to say for sure, pace J. M. O’Brien (Alexander the Great and the Invisible Enemy). O’Brien may not call him an alcoholic, but he certainly implies it.

We have two complicating factors that make any sort of real determination difficult: first, the nature of banqueting at the Macedonian court, and second, the fact that historians record the exceptional, not the usual. Symposia (drinking parties) in the Greek world were already venues for both competition and display, and Macedonians didn’t customarily dilute their wine, unlike (many) Southern Greeks. The king was not only expected to keep up, but to excel in all things, including his ability to drink. So there’s that. Add to this the fact historians don’t tell you about the 56 times the king held a symposion where nothing exciting or out-of-the-way happened. They’ll tell you about that 57th when something bad DID happen.

Even in antiquity, there was debate about whether Alexander drank too much, with detractors and Roman-era rhetoricians using him as an exempla of Drinking is Bad (especially in rulers), while apologists (like Aristobulos) claimed he didn’t overdrink, he just liked conversation so he stayed late, lingering over his wine.

Hmmm. I’m going with Door Number Three: yes, sometimes he drank too much, especially as stresses piled up, but if he’d been an actual alcoholic, even a functional one, he probably couldn’t have accomplished everything he did. For one thing, availability of alcohol on the march would’ve been sporadic, so I suspect those famous drinking parties were what happened when they got their hands on some wine, in between long stretches where they probably didn’t have much, if any.

[scaryfangirl2001]

Hephaistion and Warrior Angel and Clark Kent (fanfic, 1050 WC)

@flufftober

While Martha is unconscious in the hospital, Lex learns that Jonathan is frantically searching for a cure. That means nobody is home with Clark. Lex steps into the room, pulling the door shut behind him. Clark’s room is warm and comforting, filled with the scent of freshly laundered sheets and a faint hint of hay. He sits down on the edge of the bed, trying to act casual as Clark moans again.

"You're just a little under the weather, Clark," Lex says, his voice trying to sound reassuring. He doesn’t want to scare the farm boy with the way his mind is racing. "Nothing a little rest can't fix."

He looks at the books on Clark's nightstand. "I see you're quite the reader, Clark. Do you like…history?"

Clark groans again, his eyes still closed. Lex leans back in his chair, feeling more than a little awkward. He doesn't really know what to say to someone who has a fever and is delirious. He tries to distract himself.

“You know," he begins, "Alexander the Great…he was quite the…warrior. He had this friend… Hephiestion… they were very close. Almost inseparable. They shared a bond that transcended time itself. Their friendship was a beacon of loyalty and trust, much like ours."

Clark's unfocused eyes flicker as Lex's words fill the room, his mind struggling to grasp the meaning behind the historical parallels drawn by the older man. In his delirium, Clark can only listen, the lines between reality and fever dream blurring before him. So, Lex continues, his voice warming with nostalgia.

"Just like us, Clark. We navigate the challenges of life side by side, our friendship a testament to strength and resilience."

Lex trails off, caught in the middle of a story about ancient Greece and its legendary warriors. He's been thinking about Clark a lot lately, and it’s been driving him a bit crazy. He tries to push the thought away, focusing on the comics he sees on the dresser.

“Do you like Warrior Angel?” he asks Clark, hoping to find something to connect with the farmboy. “It’s a great series. The Angel of War… he’s powerful. You know, he has a nemesis, Angelus Devilicus. "Clark, you and I are just like them,” he says, his words tinged with reverence for the fictional heroes. “Warrior Angel, the protector of the innocent, and Angelus Devilicus, the cunning adversary. Our friendship, it’s just like their eternal battle. You, Clark, you’re the embodiment of goodness, just like Warrior Angel. And me? Maybe I’m more like Angelus Devilicus, the misunderstood villain with a hint of darkness.”

He develops childlike enthusiasm as he delves deeper into the intricacies of the comic series, his words painting a vivid picture of their friendship. Clark makes a noise in response, but it propels Lex forward. The room seemingly blurs around them, the lines between fantasy and reality becoming increasingly blurred. Lex is lost in the world of his beloved comic series, his voice rising and falling with the rhythm of a well-worn tale. And Clark, in his delirious state, drifts in and out of consciousness, catching only snippets of Lex’s passionate monologue. Lex feels a strange sense of satisfaction when he sees that Clark is staring at him, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. But he knows he’s just delirious.

“I… I’m… the Angel of War,” Clark mumbles, his voice barely audible.

Lex doesn't bother to stifle his laugh, "Of course you are. You’re quite the warrior, Clark.”

A weird noise outside makes Lex jump. He sees the mail carrier out the window and decides to carry it in for the Kents. He picks up the stack of letters and magazines and brings them inside, absentmindedly flicking through them. That's when he notices a crumpled pink paper on the porch next to the door. Curiosity piqued, Lex gently smoothes out the paper, revealing a letter from Chloe. His eyes scan the words on the page as he walks back to Clark. Seeing the words “Clark,” “My Dearest,” and “Chloe” written in a neat, feminine script, he realizes it’s a love letter to Clark. 

"Your friend Chloe wrote you a letter, Clark. I'll read it to you, okay?"

Clark hums, so Lex reads, "I want to let you in on a secret, Clark. I'm not who you think I am. In fact, my disguise is so thin, I'm surprised you haven't seen right through me. 

I'm the girl of your dreams masquerading as your best friend.  

Sometimes I want to rip off this façade like I did at the Spring Formal, but I can't because you'll get scared and you'll run away again. So I decided that it's better to live with the lie than expose my true feelings. My dad told me there are two types of girls: the ones you grow out of, and the ones you grow into. I really hope I'm the latter.  

I may not be the one you love today, Clark, and that hurts. But I'll let you go for now, hoping one day you'll fly back to me. Because I think you're worth the wait. Wow,” he says, his voice low. “Chloe, she, she really loves you.” Clark still seems asleep, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that makes Lex’s heart pound. "She's a lucky girl. You're a good man, Clark."

The superboy stirs, his brows furrowed as he tries to focus on Lex. He mumbles something unintelligible as he cracks open his eyes, a flicker of recognition in their depths. Lex has to ask what he said, leaning a little closer. Clark lies back down with a soft smile on his lips.

"Sorry Chloe," he rasps a little louder, "I love Lex."

Lex’s heart stops. He blinks, unable to comprehend the words he just heard. The letter falls from his hand. Clark believes that Chloe is sitting here; does she know about Clark's crush on the billionaire? Clark apologizes to Chloe again, and the older boy's breath hitches in his throat. He stands, tucking Clark back into the bed. After a moment's hesitation, he brushes Clark's hair off his forehead and leans down to kiss his head.

"Lex loves you too, Clark."

Clark hums contentedly, snuggling into the blanket as Lex turns to leave the farm.

[the-impala-is-my-home]

Last song: "Swan upon Leda" by Hozier

Favourite colour: green! 🟢

Currently watching: "Life on our planet" (Documentary) and "Outlander" (with my parents, when I visit. When I'm not there they'll just watch episodes without me 🥲)

Sweet/Savoury/Spicy: savoury my beloved

Relationship Status: have a lovely girlfriend 💕

Current obsession: okay low-key either dinosaurs/ancient beasts™ (always interested in them) or Alexander the great and Hephaistion (currently interested but will likely drop it soon)(I'm a little bit of a history nerd, especially when it comes to queer history, and the Netflix Documentary lead to me reading quite a few Wikipedia pages lmao)

Last thing I searched: not going into specifics for internet privacy reasons but I was looking up some Info on my Uni website

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NINE PEOPLE I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW BETTER

tagged by @atomicruinsperfection (thank you!!)

LAST SONG: Start with a Coffee by Sunny Flowers. She's local to where I live!! I saw her perform in fairy wings at a little punk club on new years eve a couple years ago and she's had my whole heart ever since. If you like hip-hop/electronica or want to support a very cool and approachable trans artist, give her a listen!

FAVOURITE COLOUR: ooooh like a blurple for sure. or a lavender. anything in the purple family. also yellow. obvs.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: my cat trying to gnaw through the box that contains her toys. and old kurtis conner videos. he's my comfort show.

SWEET/SPICY/SAVORY: YO I have done a FULL 180 since turning 30 and now I'm a full-blown savory supporter. I don't do spice above like a sriracha level. I'm a lil bitch. I'll own it.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: In one.

CURRENT OBSESSION: OFMD, the iced dirty chai specifically made by the coffee van that visits my workplace, podfics, snorkeling.

LAST THING YOU GOOGLED: the opening hours of my favourite bar

tagging: @bizarrelittlemew @stardust-ti @spookyfbi @romcomtelecom @depressedgremlinbitch and uhhh that's all i got, it's not 9 people but it'll do

[alexandros-ho-megas]

Fellow overly dramatic, touch starved Cancer child...have you ever felt alone amongst others? Or thought perhaps you were better off remembered and admired rather than truly loved?? (Forgive me, great king, I seem to be going through a rough patch)

Overly dramatic? Me? Moving past that, I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through a rough patch and I hope that everything improves for you soon.

Yes, I did feel alone amongst others, especially for the last 8 months of my life. Hephaistion was dead and my other closest friend, Krateros, was ill and on his way back to Macedonia (Arrian 7.12.4). Not the best time in my life. I went on a bender sprinkled with some murder (Arrian 7.15.2-3), as people naturally do.

To answer your second question, I do think that it is better to be remembered above all else. The concept of kleos aphthiton (imperishable glory) was a cultural touchstone that I lived my life by:

For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells meI carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;

μήτηρ γάρ τέ μέ φησιθεὰ Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζδιχθαδίας κῆρας φερέμεν θανάτοιο τέλοσδε.εἰ μέν κ’ αὖθι μένων Τρώων πόλιν ἀμφιμάχωμαι,ὤλετο μέν μοι νόστος, ἀτὰρ κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται:

-Achilles, Iliad 9.410-413 trans. Lattimore

It is tragic to admit, but I was not universally beloved in my life. There were multiple assassination attempts against myself by both my close friends (Arrian 3.26.1) and my historian and royal pages (Arrian 4.12.7). Shocking, I know. Who wouldn’t love me? 

Keep in mind, even if you’re as glorious as I am, there will always be detractors and people who don’t love you. And that’s out of your power to control.  Therefore, focus on glory! Get that sweet, sweet kleos aphthiton and be remembered for all time and have people speculate far too closely on your sex life for thousands of years to come! 

[captaingondolin]

Other fandoms/pairings I currently like/love/want to bond over, even though this is not a multifandom blog + more comprehensive fandom list + general fic likes/favourite tropes

Alexander/Hephaistion (14 years and counting as my absolute OTP, I met my best friend @fannyinfinity through writing terrible self-insert fic about them)

Nikolai Luzhin/Kirill from Eastern Promises. Probably my most obscure fandom, as my tastes are usually quite mainstream, but I love my murderous, horrible, criminal babies with all my heart.

Hamilton (I ship Whamilton like it’s nobody’s business, and it’s one of my few fandoms where I don’t multiship much. Also I SAW IT LIVE.)

Tolkien (as you might imagine from my name, the Silmarillion is my jam, although I also love LotR and I am in love with Aragorn. Ecthelion/Glorfindel is The OTP of my life, and in the remote case that a fellow shipper is reading, PLEASE come say hi, I desperately need shipping pals)

Greek mythology - I didn’t want to like The Song of Achilles because it has a very similar concept to a fic I started writing age 14 and never completed, and I didn’t like it. I fucking loved it. I also had a phase of shipping Apollo/Dionysus real hard for some reason.

Early Modern theatre - and YES, I watched TNT’s Will and liked it, no shame, and I also saw the stage version of Shakespeare in Love which was AMAZING and also hella gayer than the film. I ship Shakespeare and Marlowe with the force of a thousand burning suns and if you ship them too you are morally obligated to come talk to me, and also if you read the Promethean Series/Stratford Man by Elizabeth Bear because OH MAN

Currently screaming in pain as I wait for the next instalment of the Gentlemen Bastards series. Why do I love that little shit Lamora so much, why? And Jean. Jean is The Best.

Arthur/Lancelot from the 2004 King Arthur Movie. I kinda had a few months of obsession and now I have a book on arthurian mythology and a trip planned to Tintagel castle and lots of tears for these two dorks, but only in this very specific film? Honestly, self.

Kingsman. KINGSMAN. Harry/Eggsy. Obviously. LANCELOT STAN. She deserved better. To give you an idea of how much I like it: when it first appeared on Netflix, my housemates thought it was a series, because I could not stop watching it and they though I was marathoning it.

Used to be in the MCU (&some comics) fandom (now I am happy to see it around my dash, but I have lost the plot, mostly), where I multiship even more than usual. As this tweet says, I’m a Tony stan first and a human being second.

Band of Brothers (Winnix Winnix Winnix)

Jesus Christ Superstar (I find the lack of good Jesus/Judas content disturbing)

The History Boys (Scripps/Posner, Dakin/Irwin)

Hannibal (the comic sans edits are my favourite things)

Legally Blonde the Musical

Saint Seiya look, we won’t get into that, but it was the fandom I was most active and productive in, one of my first and still dearly beloved. I have a laundry list of ships, an enduring love for Aphrodite, and just... so many feelings.

[heartofoshun]

Fandom Snowflake: Day 10

Join in the challenge here!

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (Or a few!) Tell us what makes it work for you, and why it appeals to you so much. Talk about what you like to see in fanworks featuring that theme most. Feel free to include recs and examples!

In the Tolkien fandom, I have a lot of very particular kinks. One of my big ones in Silmarillion-based fics, is examining in my fanfic how for me the various of the lords of the Noldor are really the big heroes of Beleriand. In the hundreds of years while they held out against the onslaught of Morgoth, Tolkien’s supposed “good guys” did not do enough or actively turned their backs on the rest of peoples of Middle-earth. I love to read the part about Turgon’s troops arriving at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears—what an incredible description. What Fingon’s response must have been to the unexpected arrival of his brother’s clean, fresh troops in fancy armor? What a pretty picture and what a contrast to his own battered if battled-hardened forces? But, seriously dude, too little too late.

Talk about strong women in The Silmarillion, who was the hero in Gondolin? It’s hard to surpass Idril—the barefoot, golden princess—but who, with her courage, prescience, and common-sense constructs an escape route and saves many of her people, while her father’s was lost in dreamy denial trying to replicate Tirion-on-Tuna.

Also, I am supposed to favor Thingol and Melian,  dictating who will live and who will die from within their fenced-in magically protected land. Thoroughly creeps me out--so much more deliberate and cold-blooded than the Kinslaying at Alqualondë. But hey, that’s just me. My response was certainly was not the author’s intent.

How about romance? Tolkien staked a lot upon his tale of Beren and Lúthien. But what made me swoon and fall in love were these lines:

Maedhros the eldest of his sons, and on a time the friend of Fingon ere Morgoth’s lies came between, spoke to Fëanor, saying: ‘Now what ships and rowers will you spare to return, and whom shall they bear hither first? Fingon the valiant?’

Fingon/Maedhros! Slash of my heart! They are my Achilles and Patroclus, my Alexander and Hephaistion. I had to know their story from the moment I read that Maedhros disobeyed his father when he refused to go back for Fingon. And Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros—so romantic. As @havisham has said (more than once I think) “Fingon’s such a goddamned hero”!

I could go on and on how I love the story of that family—Maglor the mighty singer, wise Finrod Felagund (the Renaissance prince among the lot) attacking a werewolf barehanded and ripping its throat out with his teeth, Celegorm beloved of Oromë talking to birds and animals, ballsy Aredhel keeping up with boys on a horse in a white dress and escaping the gilded-cage of Gondolin, and witchy-wonderful, arrogant, ambitious Galadriel, the quintessential survivor, etc., etc.

My Silmarillion kink? I adore those notorious and charismatic Noldorin princes in Beleriand.

[srslybusiness]

Wait I'm gonna put do the updates on read more I think

Things I knew abt Alexander by the page 18

1. Jealous of his baby sister

2. Wants to marry his mom

3. Hates his dad

4. Bites apparently

Goddd it's so funny how he go from 0-100??? Like. The excitement of a kid and that make sense but it's also like

Ptolemy: hey ok so yeah I'm the King's bastard but you can't tell anyone including me bc my mom was already married and it's an honor thing. We can be blood brothers tho

Alexander: ok so here's my wrist vein :)

And Ptolemy is just like "yea uhh we don't need that many??? Just a nick is ok" but Alexander just keep going "no it's ok!! You can do it here!!" Like hello 😭😭 you're 6 or 7 ot something hdhdhdjdj

Godd the fucking. Comedy of Demosthenes being horny and thought Alexander was someone's bedboy bc of the way he dressed to the point of asking his price only to find out that he's the king's son during the next day meeting it's like.

That's what you get for being a clown !

Girl why is he gaslighting them like this 💀💀💀

Godd page 144-147 are just Hephaistion's gay little thoughts...... "Hephaistion called to mind the tale of Semele, beloved of Zeus. He had come in a human shape, but that was not enough for her; she had demanded the embrace or his divine epiphany. It had been too much, she had burned to ashes. He would need to prepare himself for the touch or fire." LIKE ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!

HEPHAISTION ID LIKE TO STUDY YOU UNDER A MICROSCOPE LIKE he's getting more possessive he's not jealous of others but of himself and wanted his standing to be acknowledged if Alexander became a traitor so would he like you're DERANGED 😭😭😭

Now at fourteen she was more like Philip than ever, square-faced, with strong curly hair; but her eyes were not his, they were sad as an unloved dog's. HSHSHSJSU???? THATS YOUR SISTER HELLO...

Youre unhinged 😭😭

[jeannereames]

Two related questions :)

1. We know that over time Hephastion will become an important commander, how will your Hephastion behave as a commander? what will be his main qualities and what are the main differences between him and Alexander in terms of command?

2. I noticed that in the first book Cleitus doesn't get along very well with Hephastion, how do you see them both getting along with joint command of the most prestigious unit in the army?

For other readers, these questions are about Dancing with the Lion, the novels, not the historical people. While my characters are informed by my academic work, I obviously have to flesh them out for the books.

(My) Hephaistion is a reluctant but highly competent commander. I foreshadowed this in Rise when he takes command early in Alexandros’s self-imposed exile. Alexandros is too emotionally numb to do, so Hephaistion steps in. And he’s good at it. That’s the first hint of where he’ll excel: logistics and organization. But as soon as Alexandros is ready to resume leadership, Hephaistion is happy to hand it over. He’s simply not ambitious. People can be good at something without necessarily wanting to do it (regularly).

In the novels, Hephaistion won’t have much in the way of command initially because Alexandros has numerous older commanders who he inherited from Philippos. It wouldn’t be politically astute to just demote or get rid of these men. In his first few years in Asia, he did appoint several to fill satrapies in areas he’d conquered, men such as Antigonos, Balakros…even Nearchos. Nearchos doesn’t become his admiral until much later in the campaign when he’s recalled east from his assignment on the coast (Lycia/Pamphylia). Although in Nearchos’s case, he was there because Alexander (the historical man) trusted him. Alexandros (the character) will assign him there to keep an eye on the other powerful men who Alexandros doesn’t trust as much.

It won’t be until these replacements happen that we’ll see Hephaistion gradually move up. His first big assignment occurs in Sidon (slightly skewed in the novel from the histories, which are presented as a moral tale meant to mimic popular Roman myths of [et al.] Cincinnatus).

In general, he accepts commands because incompetence annoys him. In that, he and Alexandros are much alike. But while Alexandros will charm his way into “helping” you, Hephaistion will just rip whatever it is out of your hands and do it himself…faster. So, I don’t see him as a beloved commander, but do see him as a respected one, at least by the men he commands—who directly benefit from his competence (and fairness).

In terms of his skill-set, it’s the same as the historical man’s: organization/logistics and diplomacy. (My) Hephaistion is not, however, the person Alexandros sends when he wants to charm somebody. But he is the person Alexandros sends when he needs a commander who can effect a quick (and accurate) assessment of interpersonal dynamics and any weaknesses (or strengths) of an opponent. He’s not easy to fool.

Moreover, if he may not be the soul of charm, he also isn’t a bull in a China shop; he can be perfectly polite, if reserved. He can also be sneaky in a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth way—also not unlike Alexandros. In book 3, King, he’ll function as Alexandros’s spy at one point, precisely because he can convincingly play pretty-but-dumb. This, again, was foreshadowed in book one, Becoming, where he tricks Kassandros at the very beginning by pretending to be what Kassandros took him for: a backwoods bumpkin. (That’s still one of my favorite scenes in book 1, and among the few I wrote way back in 1988/89 that’s still in the published version.)

Anyway, Hephaistion is diplomatic in the sense that he “reads the room” well and doesn’t often lose his cool (or his temper). When he decides to go after somebody, it will be entirely pre-meditated, and usually devastating. In that, he’s completely different from the hot-tempered Alexandros (and most of their friends). But it works well for him in command because the soldiers, and later officers, serving under him can’t easily rile him up. (Krateros is another matter, but more on that later.)

As for the second half of your question: Kleitos and Hephaistion will never be bosom buddies because they’re such different personalities, but over time, Kleitos has revised his opinion of Hephaistion. When the latter first arrived in Pella, Kleitos thought him a spoilt fancy-boy, which drove Hephaistion’s reactionary responses. At that point, he’s still young enough to be triggered. As he ages, and grows in confidence, he’s less easy to provoke. Kleitos also comes to recognize his skill as a fighter. Hephaistion will never be an especially gifted battle commander, nor is he “warm” enough that men will follow him through hell and high water the way the will Alexandros, or Parmenion, or Krateros. But he is a leader rather than a “boss,” which goes a long way. He learned that from Alexandros, and it’s also in his basic nature. He won’t ask people to do what he won’t do himself. But he also won’t chit-chat with you while you’re both doing it. 😆

Thus, Kleitos comes to respect him. At the end of Rise, note that Hephaistion has beaten Kleitos in Single Combat, even if he didn’t win overall first place. That little victory goes some way towards Hephaistion being able to let go of his long-nursed resentment towards Kleitos. He’s proven himself to himself, which matters most.

So yes, they’ll be able to work with each other later.

[ladyinbooks]

Have you read Mary Renault's Alexander series/if you have, do you have thoughts? I've only read the persian boy so far and just started Fire from heaven but I've always heard amazing things about how she wrote them

Hello lovely anon!

I'm going to start off with an apology in advance, because whoops! You've asked me something that's set off my inner ramblings quite happily here (in a good way). So I'm going to roll up my sleeves behind the 'read more' and get overexcited about this.

But just in case, the tl;dr is: yes, I have. And yes, I love the series (with a few caveats):

Let's start when young!Lady was a small, wide-eyed thing, all of 17, who had just lied on her Oxford application form, and said she'd read Arrian's Campaigns of Alexander. Then she got called for interview and thought 'Oh shit, I'd better actually read it'. So she did. And she loved it. And she kind of... ended up developing a little obsession with this bloke called Alexander.

Now, around the same time as this deceit was taking place, Robin Lane Fox's biography on Alexander was fairly accessible in most book stores. Possibly because it's really quite a readable biography, and thus had become quite popular. And so young!Lady snaffled that too, and read it. And Lane Fox's name kept coming up in conjunction with Mary Renault's (perhaps because - personally speaking - I think they have a fairly similar approach in their views on Alexander), and so young!Lady thought 'Hey! Let's read those books too!'

All of which, is a very long-winded way of saying: I read them, and I loved them at the time. (To be fair, I still love them. Hephaistion my beloved.) Renault's style of writing is gorgeous. I know for some people it can be off-putting, and a little difficult to parse (she's not what I call a 'light read' in that sense), but I genuinely love the way she constructs her prose.

She was also, I think, one of the first fictional writers to actively and openly tackle an explicit romantic relationship between Alexander and Hephaistion (most prominent in Fire from Heaven, but it's definitely still there in The Persian Boy), and although Hephaistion-as-a-concept had been kicking around before then, I think Renault made the relationship (and Hephaistion) more... mainstream, if I can put it like that?

Renault's historical research is also good. She does give a really interesting flavour of what it must have felt like to live in a Macedonian court, filled with intrigue and the kind of political machinations that resulted in heads rolling. She captures that dangerous, desperate element very well, and she makes Macedonian life accessible to a reader in a way I very much enjoy.

I think as I've got older, where my love for Renault's version has become a little tarnished is in my own inability to put aside my mental nitpickings (and this is no fault of Renault's writing!). Her Alexander trilogy writes about Alexander-the-Legend, not Alexander-the-Man. For me, there is very little balance to be had from her, and although this was a stylistic choice, I do find myself missing the nuance of an Alexander who is not, well, pretty much a perfect example of a living god. He's almost Achillean in the way Renault portrays him - far beyond us brief mortals! - and in some ways that makes his fictional character feel more inaccessible to me. Her Alexander is untouchable. Unknowable. Godlike in his abilities and driven by ambitions far beyond anything a non-heroic mortal can comprehend.

I also feel that Renault's portrayal (understandably) is a bit wrapped up in W.W. Tarn's vision of Alexander as some kind of benevolent conqueror (he wasn't), whose life's exploits were geared towards the betterment of mankind (they weren't). I need to add: this isn't a criticism of Renault! Tarn's scholarship and ideology was very prevalent for quite a while (see: Robin Lane Fox, who sort of subscribed to a viewpoint of Alexander along vaguely similar lines, I think).

My other gentle nitpick, is that very often Renault's women are stereotypes. Or caricatures. Olympias comes across as a vengeful harpy (interestingly, I think there is a lot or Renault's Olympias in Oliver Stone's film version). Again, I think it's fair to defend Renault with the fact that she's working with historical sources that can have the same biases - but even so, for me it's not particularly satisfying.

In the same vein...

Hephiastion my beloved. He does suffer from this too, I think. He's very much in the style of an 'Alexander-can-do-no-wrong' kind of character, and although that does fit the narrative purpose, it simultaneously makes me a little sad that we don't particularly get to see an active, competent Hephaistion in the way I personally feel he likely was. He's not completely reduced to the role of 'the boyfriend', but he is completely defined by Alexander - his behaviour, his impulses, his career are all attributed more to being 'philalexandros', than to any genuinely displayed individualistic motives. Again, it's not a bad thing, but for my Hephaistion-loving gremlin heart it can be dissatisfying if I don't turn off that portion of my brain a bit.

All of which is my very rambling way of saying: yes, I've read Renault's Alexandriad, and yes I genuinely do love those books - for what they represent, for what they do and just for the sheer joy of reading them. But I do have some slight quibbles. None of which are enough to put me off of them, only to say that I think as a reader I have to temper my expectations and meet the books where they are (for what they are). They are beautifully written, and I do think they do something rather unique for the Alexander mythos.

One other book I'd recommend - purely for the sheer delight of it - is Aubrey Menen's A Conspiracy of Women. Written around the same time, it's very different and deals primarily with a moment in time during Alexander's campaigns. It is a satire (not particularly historically motivated), and it pokes fun at quite literally everyone. Whilst not at all romantic in (either sense of the word) the way Renault's writing is, I do love the fact it takes aim at Alexander, and the Alexander mythos (along with a more generally satirical approach to the concept of empire building).

I also love Menen's Hephaistion, who is possibly the driest, wittiest takes-no-nonsense-from Alexander character:

Few men could face an angry Alexander and remain in control of themselves. But one of these was Hephaestion. He glanced at his friend the King, smiled and then said, "Alexander, if you continue to glare that way, the poor man will die of fright. Bathyllus," he said, "for the moment only His Majesty may wear Persian robes. Maybe one day we shall all do so. But His Majesty has not yet made up his mind on the subject."

This being the exact truth, it made Alexander angrier than ever, as Hephaestion knew it would, but with him and not with the unfortunate Bathyllus. Alexander turned his back on Hephaestion. "See that he is brought to my tent," he said, and strode away.

"See that you bring yourself to His Majesty's tent," said Hephaestion to Bathyllus. "I am in no mood for his imperial tantrums this evening..." (pg.19)

Or:

"Hephaestion," he said, "am I really as vain as you say?"

"Did I say you were vain?"

"You said I was in love with myself. Just now. When I boxed your ears."

"Ah," said Hephaestion. "Yes. You are."

"You must tell me when I get vain."

"I do," said Hephaestion.

"Yes, you do," said Alexander. "And I am grateful."

"You are usually remarkably cross," said Hephaestion. "But I shall go on telling you."

"It's strange," said Alexander. "We have conquered a world together, but our friendship is as strong as ever."

Hephaestion made no answer.

"You must find me very hard to bear sometimes, Hephaestion."

"Sometimes," agreed Hephaestion.

"When?" asked Alexander.

"When, for instance, you say things like 'We have conquered a world together, but our friendship is as strong as ever'." Hephaestion echoed exactly the touch of pomposity that Alexander had put into his voice.

Alexander smiled. He reached out and put a hand on Hephaestion's shoulder as they rode together." (pg. 101)

Hephaistion my beloved.

[ladyinbooks]

Hey Lady, just curious. If you don't mind sharing, what are some of your favorite books?

Also, I love, love your stories. Thanks for sharing them.

Aw, thank you! ❤️🤗

Favourite books. Hmm, this is a tough one! I think it depends what mood I'm in, but I'll give it a go:

Swordspoint (Ellen Kushner) - I mentioned this book in the previous ask I responded to, but it's just a gorgeous book about love, politics, and devotion vs honour. Couple it with a main m/m romance and it's honestly a book I've never got tired of.

The Song of Achilles (Madeleine Miller) - I'm... probably going to be hunted down by fans of TSoA, so I'm going to preface this by saying: I love this book. I adore the prose; I love the romance. My academic background is Classics, and this is the first book I can remember that properly and explicitly deals with the Achilles/Patroclus romance. All that said, I do have quite a few nitpicks about her Patroclus portrayal, so although I absolutely recommend this, it's a book I have to put aside some of my own Patroclus preferences to enjoy.

Fire from Heaven (Mary Renault) - While I'm on a Classics kick: this book. It's an old-y, but a good-y. Non-explicit queer romance, but it's all about the early life of Alexander the Great. Hephaistion my beloved. You have to take it for what it is, but there's a reason Renault is still referred to as the queen of Alexander fiction. Is her depiction of him romanticised and often misty-eyed? Yes. Is it still eminently readable? Also yes. No, seriously, Hephaistion my beloved.

Rivers of London (Ben Aaronovitch) - Wonderful, wonderful set of books about a PC in the Met who ends up in the secretive (and tiny) magical investigative branch. Fantastic characters, fun murder mysteries and magic. Some of the later books in the series began to feel a little slow and same-y for me, but the first three are absolute wonders. Peter Grant is a phenomenal main character.

Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien) - I know, I know, this is predictable, but... I love it. I love it so much. I love the theme of kindness outlasting evil; of good triumphing not because of the strongest person, but because of the idea that anyone can stand up and make a difference. Also I love Boromir. I said what I said. 🤣

That's all I've got for now - I read a lot, but tend to be really, really picky, so something has to have a huge impact to stay on my 'absolute must-reads' list forever. However, I'm curious if anyone has any recs they'd like to send - I'm always up for hoarding more books!

[jeannereames]

Hello Dr Reames,

Let me start by saying that DWTL Is one of the best novels I've ever read and I can't thank you enough for writing it. It was a pleasure to read such a great characterization of Hephaistion. Also, thank you for running this interesting blog, every new entry is a discovery!

Regarding my question: you've mentioned in a prior ask that Hektor was implied to be a "favorite" as well. Can you tell me which are these sources? I've tried to do my own research but I'm not and expert and It shows ahahah.

Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and like my version of Hephaistion. :-)

As for Hektor as a possible favorite: that comes solely from the description of Hektor's death in Curtius (4.8.7-9). He's described as being in the flower of his youth and dear to Alexander for a short while: eximio aetatis flore, in paucis Alexandro carus.

Carus means "dear one" or "beloved," but context determines whether or not it would have a romantic/sexual implication. It's not like eromenos, where the romantic/sexual overtones are clear. Given the additional description of him being in the flower of his youth, that sorta implies he was a little more than just a bosom buddy.

But it is up to interpretation. We don't find Hektor, or his death, even mentioned in Arrian, nor in any other sources. Without Curtius, we wouldn't know Parmenion had three boys. It happened while the army was in Egypt. He died from exhaustion (and possibly water in his lungs) from an overloaded boat capsizing in the Nile. (Alexander gave him a magnificent funeral.)

[jeannereames]

Hi Dr. Reames, thanks so much for relaying all these fascinating analyses (I have to say, I find myself back on your blog multiple times a week just to check out more cool bits of information). I actually have two questions, but please feel free to only look at one! My first is, what was Alexander’s relationship with Parmenion initially? We know he was loyal to Philip, he served somewhat as an advisor to Alexander too, and then Alexander killed him because of the Philotas plot. I mean, he was a senior officer and had served the Macedonian court for so long—might Alexander and Parmenion have had a decent relationship at some point? And my second question is, how come absolutely nothing survives from the time of Alexander? Did his “successors” try to destroy things related to him (they did kill his son and his mother) so they could protect their own ambitions? I really appreciate your time, thanks for checking out my questions! Again, please feel free to just look at one and not the other :D

First, I’m glad people are actually reading these. LOL.

The biggest problem with discerning Alexander’s true relationship with Parmenion prior to the downfall of Philotas are the inserted “Alexander vs. Parmenion” conversations. You’ve heard them, if you think about it. “If I were Alexander,” Parmenion says, “I would …” “So would I,” Alexander replies, “if I were Parmenion.” Meant as a put down. Parmenion is repeatedly shown as overly cautious and a bit of a fuddy-duddy. It’s a deliberate motif, and most modern scholars recognize these as later insertions.

They seem to have several purposes: first, they showcase Alexander’s dashing bravery and brilliance as opposed to Parmenion’s plodding traditional approaches. Second, they backset conflict between the two. Third, they suggest Alexander didn’t really need Parmenion’s advice; he could have won all those battles by himself.

We suspect this is the work of Kallisthenes (the official court historian) before his own fall from grace. The Page’s Conspiracy happened after the Philotas Affair. Ergo, it appears in a number of the later histories. Some (esp. Badian) have suggested that Alexander was just looking for a way to get rid of Parmenion, and either seized on Philotas’s culpability, or even set up Philotas in order to get rid of Parmenion (Badian’s article on the Philotas Affair suggest Alexander was keeping some sort of FBI-style file on Parmenion and his family.) They’ve point out that he left him behind in Ekbatana when taking off to Baktria, but that was a damn important position! And Parmenion was c.70, by then. I suspect he was moving him towards administrative positions, out of active combat. Phiilotas’s stupidly forced his hand. Philotas was his last living son (Hektor had died in Egypt, Nikanor at Gaugamela). He couldn’t trust that Parmenion wouldn’t feel honor-bound to retaliate for his death (it was a matter of timē). And Parmenion was sitting on Alexander’s all-important supply lines; he could cut off the entire army and leave them to starve. (This, btw, doesn’t justify murder, but does explain it.)

After that, he almost had to inflict a hatchet-job on Parmenion’s reputation. Murdering Parmenion would look even worse if everyone could read how much he owed him.

If one takes those A vs. P conversations with a grain of salt and looks more widely, it’s clear that Alexander owed his kingship to Parmenion—and Parmenion was compensated (so to speak) by the high appointments of his sons, at least the elder two, and his other family members. Although Philotas was older than Alexander, he wasn’t a senior general, yet he got the plumb assignment of commander of the Companion Cavalry. His younger brother commanded the Hypaspists—the whole thing, not just the royal unit. Parmenion’s brother, Asander held high positions, as did another relative (another Nikanor) in the navy. The boys, at least, leapfrogged over older men who may have been more deserving. And Philotas seems to have flaunted his position and relations. We’re told in a couple places that, while his father was beloved, he was not. Certainly Krateros couldn’t stand him, although being an enemy of Krateros may not have required more than being in Krateros’s way. Ha. Krateros was kinda-sorta Parmenion’s understudy.

Alexander often took a good deal of Parmenion’s advice. For instance, there are actually TWO verions of the Battle of Granikos, and they’re almost mutually exclusive. One appears to be a rewrite for drama…and to get in a dig at Parmenion. It’s the better-known version, where the battle takes place in the afternoon, at the end of a long march, and is a cavalry-heavy battle because not all the infantry had arrived. It’s one of the first A vs. P exchanges, where Parmenion advises Alexander to wait for the rest of the army, then attack at night or at least in the morning. Alexander tells him he “won’t steal a march” and brashly attacks the Persians before they’re ready. And wins (after a significant loss of Companions).

The other version is more or less exactly what Parmenion advised: he waited till morning. It was still mostly a cavalry battle and much of what happened is similar…but he did what Parmenion suggested. Yet in that version, he looks less heroic…but more level-headed.

Guess which one is probably the true version. 😉

Philotas, btw, got himself in trouble for asserting that Alexander’s big wins weren’t really his, but Parmenion’s (and Philotas’s). Philotas may have been a blowhard, but at least part of that was true. Alexander consistently gave Parmenion the difficult but absolutely crucial positions at Issos and Gaugamela. He knew damn well that if Parmenion fell on the left, it didn’t matter what he did. That’s WHY he didn’t chase Darius either time, but especially at Gaugamela.

However difficult Philotas was, we’re told that Alexander was close to Hektor, the youngest of Parmenion’s sons. When Hektor died accidentally in Egypt, Alexander was heartbroken and threw him a huge funeral. Hektor is among the boys I had with Alexander at Mieza in the novels.

As for what Parmenion thought of Alexander, I expect he saw him as his best friend’s son, and therefore felt some responsibility for him, after Philip’s untimely death. Parmenion and Philip appear to have been real friends. Philip and Antipatros, not so much. Antipatros had been a friend to Philip’s older brother, Perdikkas, who apparently had a more philosophic turn of mind. And indeed, Antipatros and Aristotle later were fast friends. There’s a funny story of Philip and Parmenion playing draughts (and drinking), when Antipatros entered the room. Immediately Philip shoved the game board under his chair, like some naughty boy caught skivving off. It’s hysterical (the anecdote comes from either Plutarch’s Moralia or, more likely, Athenaeus’s Supper Party). Parmenion was older than Philip, but closer to him in age than Antipatros. Also, Antipatros and Parmenion didn’t really like each other. And there’s Philip’s famous quip that the Athenians should count themselves lucky if they could find 10 good generals every year (their custom of electing generals is what he’s referring to). In his time as king, he’d found only one. Parmenion. (It’s obviously a dig at Athens for poor generals; in Philip’s day they had only a couple decent ones, Phokion being the best.)

Anyway, given Parmenion’s closeness to Philip, I’ve always assumed that he would have backed the candidate Philip wanted on the throne, and that was Alexander. As I noted elsewhere, Philip’s last child was a girl, not a boy. So Attalos had no skin the game anymore. Ergo, even if Parmenion had married his own daughter to Attalos, when push came to shove, he shoved him under the bus (had him executed) when Alexander asked him to. I expect he didn’t do it for “free.” That’s why Philotas and Nikanor had their positions. He could always marry his daughter to someone else, and did: Koinos/Coenus, which is why Koinos was so eager to help “question” Philotas, his brother-in-law: to prove his loyalty to Alexander.

As for why we don’t still have the original histories of Alexader, written by contemporaries? Simple loss over time. I seem to recall reading stats somewhere that only a quarter to a third of (known) texts from antiquity have survived. No, I don’t remember where, but the percentage doesn’t surprise me. How do we know about missing texts? From “testamonia” in surviving ones, especially collections, or books like Diogenes Laertus which contains the lives of famous philosophers and their bibliography. D.L. is how we know Aristotle wrote 4 books of letters to ATG, 1 each to Hephaistion and Olympias, as well as letters to Antipatros.

Some quick terminology: “extant” means “still existing.” So an “extant” text is one we still have. A “testamonium” is mention of a text or author in another text. And a “fragmentum” is a quoted section from another text, or a paraphrasing. Keep in mind that while ancient memories were generally better than ours, fragmenta (when we can compare) often contain slight errors and rephrasings. The major collection of these in Greek was compiled by Felix Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, often referred to as FGrH or just “Jacoby.” The original 1923 version was just in Greek, but New Jacoby is translated, and now available as Jacoby Online!

Another super important source of information on ancient texts, people, and places unavailable elsewhere now is the Suda [Suidae Lexicon], a mid-Byzantine “encyclopedia” of the ancient Mediterranean world. It has LOADS of info otherwise unattested in our extant sources. Visit the Suda Online.

Anyway, back to our texts. Popularity is one reason certain texts make it. The fact we have FIVE different histories of Alexander (however varying in quality) is actually extraordinary, the most we have for any single individual from antiquity. And it’s not only popularity in antiquity, but popularity later. Plutarch was very popular in the medieval and Renaissance, so we have a lot of Plutarch surviving. More copies…more likely something will make it.

So no, what we lack isn’t from any concerted effort to erase a text. The Successors penned their own histories (buffing their own reputations and skewering their rivals), but they didn’t try to systematically get rid of other’s writings. To do so would have been very difficult, if not impossible. Most of the contemporary histories were still available down into the early Byzantine era and probably beyond. We just don’t have them now.

[jeannereames]

I just finished ‘Becoming’ and I absolutely loved it! I just wondered if you believe that AtG and Hephaistion continued their romantic relationship throughout their lives or if you think they let that side of their friendship go as they got older as was more common at the time? Anyway! I absolutely loved ‘Becoming’ and I can’t wait to read ‘Rise’!

I’m guessing you’re asking about the historical people, as opposed to the fictional characters? I do hope/plan to continue the Dancing with the Lion series, and in it, yes, they will remain romantically involved. Whether or not future novels are bought, however, rests on how well Becoming and Rise do. (So if you want more, get the word out and post reviews. *grin*)

Yet, with regard to the historical men, I think it’s very hard to know whether they remained sexual partners as adults. And the reason it’s hard to know involves the difficulty of our surviving sources.

As soon as historians start talking SOURCES, a lot of folks tune out. It’s BORING. *grin* But in order to give an honest answer, I kinda have to Go There.

First, let me give the TL;DR version. If they were still sexually involved as adults, I suspect it was quite occasional. And the fact it was quite occasional (if at all), may be why we don’t hear anything about it in the sources (discussion to follow). After all, they were both extremely busy men with duties and responsibilities that sometimes kept them apart for months. If they were still sexually/romantically involved, they had what we’d today call a long-distance relationship at points…and without the benefit of cell phones.

It may have been a gradual “weaning” from each other, rather than anything sharp. So they may have been lovers as teens, then over time, each took younger beloveds, and finally, wives—all while remaining emotionally very, very close. (Although I suspect that, like any friendship OR love affair, they had ups-and-downs, fights and reconciliations.)

Now, here’s why the TL;DR summary above gets a big fat label: “SPECULATION.”

The sources are the only way we know anything about the past, and if they can’t be trusted, or at least not trusted in toto, we have a Really Big Problem. So let me lay it out.

Before I do, however, I want to remind readers that I DO think Alexander and Hephaistion were lovers, at least in their youth. But no, it’s not “obvious.” Theirs wasn’t a world especially reticent about same-sex affairs (*cough* see below), even if post-Christian, modern historians had trouble with it until the last 40 years or so. So if the (surviving) ancient authors don’t talk about them as lovers, even while discussing other same-sex pairs in the same damn text, we have to ask…why? One very real possibility is that they didn’t talk about them as lovers because they weren’t. Full stop. There could have been other reasons (I think there were), but let’s not flinch from being honest, here.

(This could have been a lot more graphic, but then I’d have to post a warning on my blog.)

So…back to our Persnickety Sources.

First, nothing has survived that Alexander wrote himself. We have a couple public inscriptions, but not one piece of writing, even a letter, from Alexander. (Any surviving letters are quoted in later sources, and probably aren’t real.*)

Second, nothing has survived written by anyone who actually knew Alexander, or even lived when he did, except forensic speeches from Athenian demagogues who mostly hated him (and weren’t writing histories anyway). One may as well trust Demosthenes on Philip.

The sources we do still have used histories written by those who knew Alexander, such as Ptolemy, Aristobulos, Nearchos, Marsyas, and even the court historian, Kallisthenes. They also used other texts of dubious worth, such as Onesikritos, who was made fun of even in his own day for writing “historical fiction.” And sometimes our later authors were using texts who, themselves, were using earlier texts. So we’ve got three (or more) layers, not just two!

Third, we have not just layers of sources, but layers in the CULTURE behind those sources.

The first layer is, of course, Macedonian. How did the Macedonians themselves view Alexander? We don’t know—not truly. Nothing survives from a Macedonian source, such as Marsyas or Ptolemy. (Some of you “in the know” might be thinking, But Polyaenus! No. Polyaenus lived 500 years after ATG; that was a very different Macedonia. [Yes, I used the Latin spelling, as he was Roman. ;p])

The second layer is Greek, but we have to qualify this. Layer 2.0 is Greece of the 4th century, especially Athenian reactionism, writing about the emerging Macedonian kingdom. There could be huge cultural differences even among Greek city-states. Case in point: Athens vs. Sparta. Greeks didn’t always understand Macedonians (sometimes, I swear, on purpose).

BUT we also have the increasingly homogenized Hellenistic world of the Successors, which was sorta like when you throw in a bunch of different colored shirts and wash them in hot water. You get a color-bleeding mess. Your red shirt (Attic-Ionic) might have a big blue streak (Doric) on it now. That’s sort of what happened to Greek culture as the Hellenistic era progressed. Lots of bleed. This had begun prior to Alexander, but he accelerated it like kerosene on a trash fire. We can call that Greek Layer 2.1, or something.

Then we have the Romans, and their culture, which, if similar to Greek, definitively wasn’t Greek in key ways. All our surviving sources were written as the Republic was collapsing and the Empire emerging, and by that point, Greece was a Roman province.

Again, we’ve got two groups here: Greeks living under Roman rule, such as Plutarch, Diodorus, and Arrian—who wrote in Greek—and then Roman authors such as Curtius, and later Justin, who wrote in Latin. But the Greeks under Rome shouldn’t be conflated with Athenians in ATG’s own day, or even under the Successors. The culture evolved and took on Roman shadings.

So that’s not just layers of sources, but layers of cultures trying to understand what people who lived a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years before them thought/believed.

Ergo, are we hearing what Alexander (or anybody else around him) really thought or intended? Or just what writers of the Second Sophistic (such as Plutarch) wanted him to model? Or how even later authors, such as Arrian, wanted to use him to flatter his patron, Hadrian?

What’s Roman, what’s Greek, and what’s Macedonian? Can we tease that out? I’d say it’s damn tricky, and often, flat impossible—although unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t believe it’s all Roman overlay. That goes too far in the other direction, IMO.

Last, we have several authors who weren’t writing about Alexander specifically, but have bits of Alexander lore embedded in their texts: Athenaeus’s “Supper Party,” or Polyaenus’s “Strategems,” or even Plutarch’s “Moralia,” just to name three.

Among these, especially later, we have authors writing material they (or later readers) tried to pass off as written by earlier authors. We often refer to these authors with the preface “Pseudo-” as in “Pseudo-Kallisthenes.” It was NOT written by Kallisthenes, but was later attributed to him.

So, now you have some idea of why Alexander historians want to pull our hair out!

But I detail that to explain why it’s so hard for me to give you any clear answer about whether Alexander and Hephaistion remained lovers as adults. Or even if they were lovers at all.

In none of our five primary histories of Alexander, nor in Plutarch’s other stuff, nor Athenaeus, etc. is Hephaistion ever called Alexander’s lover. This includes sources that do mention with apparent unconcern other pairs of male lovers. So this isn’t “the love that dared not speak it’s name.” The Greeks were pretty okay with talking about their boyfriends.

There could be OTHER reasons for deep-sixing mention of Hephaistion and Alexander as lovers, mostly having to do with status (some of which I touched on in the novels), yet the lack of clear affirmation is a problem. The only mentions we do have come from late sources, one of which belongs to that category of “pseudo-” authors I mentioned: Pseudo-Diogenes (in Aelian), as well as Arrian recording the Stoic Epiktatos. The philosophers are trying to make a point about the dangers of giving in to physical desire, so it’s hard to know how much credit to give these references.

Thus, we’re left with little besides the indirect (e.g., the Achilles-Patroklos allusions, etc.). Those have their own problems, which I’ll not go into now, as I’ve already written a small essay.

One potential reason for a lack of mention in our surviving sources is that any sexual love affair had been a product of their youth. What remained was a fiercely deep and passionate devotion. Before you pooh-pooh that—Of course they were still having sex!—consider modern marriages that have lasted for decades but no longer include sexual activity, at least between the married partners. Don’t be sucked in by Romance novel tropes.

When I was doing bereavement counseling (et al.), I ran into all sorts of arrangements that married couples made across time. Some marriages break up when the partners stop being sexually attracted to each other, and “cheat.” But others don’t, because it’s not “cheating” if it’s mutually agreed to. Or in some cases, the partners simply lost interest in sex as they aged…but didn’t fall out of love with each other. So they might have sex once a year? Maybe? That was enough. Or they had sex on the side, with permission. People don’t fit into boxes well, IME. Honesty was the hallmark of marriages that lasted even when they weren’t still having sex. I’ve known of marriages where the couples had stopped having sex years ago, but when one of them died, the other was completely devastated because of the enormous EMOTIONAL investment. I think that’s what hit Alexander when Hephaistion died. Maybe they were still having sex, at least once in a blue moon. Maybe they weren’t. That didn’t matter.

LOVE is deeper than sex, by a long shot. Which is why the Greeks counted PHILIA (true friendship) as the superior love to eros (desire).

So whether Alexander and Hephaistion were still sexually involved—or had ever had sex—doesn’t reflect the depth of their love for each other. We might not be told by the sources that they were lovers, physically, either as youths or continuing into adulthood. But the sources are abundantly clear that they loved each other best of all. When Hephaistion died, Alexander followed him about 10 months later.

(Final note: what I intend to do in the series, going forward, is a bit different from what I described here, but that’s why I specified this involves the historical men, not necessarily my fictional characters.)

*My reference to quoted material, such as letters—or speeches—not being real: it was a common practice in the ancient world for the author of histories, especially starting with Thucydides, to just MAKE SHIT UP. It was all about showing off one’s own rhetorical skills. I think, in a lot of cases, we are probably getting at least the gist of what was said. But NEVER, EVER, EVER trust the “transcription” of an ancient speech…unless it was actually recorded later by the author. So, say, Demosthenes’ Philippics are probably a cleaned up version of the speeches he delivered. But Alexander’s “Speech at Opis” is NOT what Alexander actually said.

[jeannereames]

Alexander’s Heroes: Herakles & Achilles

I'm finally reposting the entries I did for the blog tour. There are 10 total, but I won't post them quite as regularly. It's been a crazy semester. Today's is "Alexander's Heroes: Achilles & Herakles." Remember, they were written for non-specialist audiences. So for ATG fans, there’s not much new here. :-)

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Alexander may have become a hero to subsequent generations, but he had heroes of his own. The two he preferred most were Achilles (Akhilleus) and Herakles (Hercules in Latin). In book 2, Rise, he admits to Hephaistion that when he was young, he used to dress up in an ancestor’s old antique armor and pretend to be Achilles. It’s not so very different from the armies of children who recently knocked on doors for Halloween, dressed as Batman or Captain America. Why Achilles and Herakles? He considered both to be his ancestors. We might view it as quaint, but the ancients really did believe the heroes of myth had been real, and some of the living were descendants of them.

On Alexandros’s father’s side, he claimed descent from Herakles, and Herakles appeared on his first coins (along with Zeus, Herakles’s father, on the coin reverse). Later, Herakles would morph into Alexandros himself, still wearing the lion-head helmet. In Rise, readers will discover how he got that helmet (or at least my fictional version). The series title (Dancing with the Lion) will also finally be explained. Lions were a symbol of royalty in the Ancient Near East back into the Bronze Age. Greece (and Macedonia) merely continued the tradition.

On his mother’s side, however, he counted descent from Achilles. The young, brash hero of the Iliad appealed to a young, brash king. Herakles is typically depicted (and thought of by the Greeks) as an older man, late 30s to 40s. Philip prominently linked himself to Herakles. But the young Alexandros preferred the young Achilles, often depicted in Greek art as beardless.

Unlike Homer’s other epic hero, the crafty Odysseus, Achilles was a straight-shooter. He said what he thought, and Alexandros likes to think of himself the same way. Achilles was also a runner, his epithet in the Iliad being “swirft-footed.” Likewise, Alexandros is a runner.

Yet another reason Achilles might have appealed involves his legendary friendship with Patroklos, who, by the 4th century BCE, most Greeks (and Macedonians) considered Achilles’s lover too. Patroklos was older than Achilles, typically shown in art as bearded. And of course, their relationship is depicted as a sexual one in Madeline Miller’s popular The Song of Achilles.

In Becoming, it’s memory of “Akhilleus and Patroklos” that eases Alexandros’s mind about his own new relationship with Hephaistion. As prince, he shouldn’t be the beloved (eromenos), but then he recalls that Achilles had been Patroklos’s eromenos, and lost no honor for it.

Recent scholarship has raised questions about just how much the historical Alexander and Hephaistion made of an Achilles-Patroklos parallel. Some even go so far as to see it all as later Romanizing by the biographer Arrian, in order to please his patron, the Emperor Hadrian, who had a young lover, Antinoōs. So Arrian wrote Alexander and Hephaistion as Achilles and Patroclus…and by implication, so also were Hadrian and Antinoōs.

This is not a silly proposal, as Roman authors liked their historical-mythic parallels. Yet I’m inclined to think the comparison exaggerated rather than invented whole cloth, as Alexander’s interest in Achilles is evinced plenty elsewhere. To cast his best friend and probable lover as Patroklos would have suited him, and so I use it in the novel series.

In any case, Alexander the Great had his own heroes, on whose lives and deeds he both modeled himself, but against which he also competed.