Alexander the Great

by Norman F. Cantor

  Silence fell over the crowd. But when Alexander returned truly pleased with himself, he was welcomed with cheers and applause. Philip was said to have burst into tears of joy. After Alexander dismounted, Philip kissed his head and said to him, “Son, look for a kingdom that matches your size. Macedonia has not enough space for you.” Alexander was about twelve years old when this occurred.2

  So the oft-told story goes. Alexander called the horse Bucephalus, and the two were devoted to each other. He loved that horse and for twenty years, until Bucephalus died on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Alexander rode Bucephalus into battle and would ride no other until the aged steed died. For Alexander the horse was much more than an instrument. After Bucephalus’s death, Alexander founded a city on the Hydaspes River and called it Bucephala in honor of his loyal mount.

  During the earlier years, Bucephalus accompanied Alexander during many of his ordeals and dangers. Only the king rode Bucephalus, as he refused all others to attempt to mount him. He was a large horse with a noble spirit, and his distinguishing characteristic was the brand of an ox-head, for which he was given the name Bucephalus. Another story claims that, though black, he had on his head a white colored mark that resembled most of all an ox-head.3

  The horse never flinched from battle, proudly carrying Alexander into the middle of the fray. There is a contemporary wall painting showing Alexander and Bucephalus encountering the Persian emperor Darius III with his scythed chariot. Alexander on horseback hacks away at the Persian soldiers, and his army prevails over the Persian emperor, who is driven from the field. It is said that Alexander and Darius met face-to-face, and proud Bucephalus helped Alexander to triumph.

  When Alexander was a preadolescent, Philip chose the philosopher Aristotle as his tutor. Though Aristotle had not yet entered into his stage of philosophical writings, he was nonetheless interested in a wide variety of subjects. Philip had maintained a long-standing correspondence with Plato, and when he needed a tutor for his son, he turned to Plato for advice. Among Plato’s students, the job of teaching the young Alexander was much coveted—testimony to Philip’s increasing influence—and Aristotle was chosen. It is not known exactly how long the student-teacher relationship lasted or what Aristotle and Alexander discussed, but what is known is that the years they spent together had long-lasting results. Robin Lane Fox gives us some information on this subject:

  Whether briefly or not, Alexander spent these school hours with one of the most tireless and wide-ranging minds which has ever lived. Nowadays Aristotle is remembered as a philosopher, but apart from his philosophical works he also wrote books on the constitutions of 158 different states, edited a list of the victors in the games at Delphi, discussed music and medicine, astronomy, magnets, and optics, made notes on Homer, analysed rhetoric, outlined the forms of poetry, considered the irrational sides of man’s nature, set zoology on a properly experimental course in a compendious series of masterpieces whose facts become art through the love of a rare observer of nature; he was intrigued by bees and he began the study of embryology, although the dissection of human corpses was forbidden and his only opportunity was to procure and examine an aborted fetus. The contact between Greece’s greatest brain and her greatest conqueror is irresistible, and their mutual influence has occupied the imagination ever since.4

  Aristotle felt that political science was wasted on the young because they had no experience of life and still followed their emotions. This may be a “sour grapes” feeling, since there is very little evidence that Aristotle influenced Alexander’s politics at all. Once the tutoring was accomplished and Alexander was on his own, they met infrequently, if at all. There is some evidence of a correspondence, but there was a falling-out in later years. Alexander had hired Aristotle’s nephew Callisthenes as his court historian. Callisthenes accompanied the king on his conquests and wrote about him in highly flattering terms—a situation that lasted until 327 BC, when Alexander had Callisthenes executed because he had become too open with his criticisms of the king and had joined a conspiracy to unseat Alexander. Even though Aristotle described his nephew as a blockhead to involve himself in such a plot, the execution had a decided dampening effect on Aristotle’s relationship with Alexander.

  But when politics was not an issue, many of Alexander’s interests during his adult life show a definite effect of the old philosopher:

  He [Alexander] prescribed cures for snakebite to his friends; he suggested that a new strain of cattle should be shipped from India to Macedonia; he shared his father’s interest in drainage and irrigation and the reclaiming of waste land; his surveyors paced out the roads in Asia, and his fleet was detailed to explore the Caspian Sea and the Indian ocean; his treasurer experimented with European plants in a Babylonian garden, and thanks to the expedition’s findings, Aristotle’s most intelligent pupil could include the banyan, the cinnamon and a bush of myrrh in books which mark the beginnings of botany. Alexander was more than a man of ambition and toughness; he had the wide armory of interests of a man of curiosity, and in the days at Mieza there had been matter enough to arouse them. “The only philosopher,” a friend referred to him politely, “whom I have ever seen in arms.”5

  No description of Alexander’s early life would be complete without some mention of his friend Hephaestion. Likely he was also a student of Aristotle’s in the mini-school Aristotle had established at Mieza. Fox comments:

  Hephaistion was the man whom Alexander loved, and for the rest of their lives their relationship remained as intimate as it is now irrecoverable: Alexander was only defeated once, the Cynic philosophers said long after his death, and that was by Hephaistion’s thighs. …Philip had been away on too many campaigns to devote much time in person to his son and it is not always fanciful to explain the homosexuality of Greek young men as a son’s need to replace an absent or indifferent father with an older lover. Hephaistion’s age is not known [but] he may have been the older of the two, like the Homeric hero with whom contemporaries compared him, an older Patroclus to Alexander’s Achilles.6

  So it was for most Greeks of the upper classes and many Macedonians, too. It was a homoerotic world wherein gay lovers caught each other’s eyes.

  The only anomaly in the case of Alexander and Hephaestion was that the two lovers were of approximately the same age. Most aristocratic Greeks preferred young boys of around eleven or twelve. They adopted and educated these ephebes, training them in music and oratory. Each Greek aristocrat had his favorite boy, but Alexander was different. Though he had plenty of ephebes, Hephaestion was his preferred lover. Hephaestion was a military man and a general of at least the second rank. Alexander often dispatched him to deal with military matters, sometimes far away, but the two lovers always remained loyal to each other. They were bound by more than just sex.

  Alexander must have viewed Hephaestion as almost an alter ego. On one occasion in Darius’s court, Darius’s mother confused the two men, and apparently believing that the taller and more aristocratic-looking of the two was Alexander, addressed Hephaestion as Alexander. When her error was pointed out to her, she was extremely embarrassed and apologized profusely. Alexander responded, “Your confusion over the name is unimportant, for this man is also Alexander.”7

  When Alexander’s relationship with Hephaestion ended after two decades, owing to the latter’s death, Alexander grieved deeply. Two writers of antiquity describe Alexander’s actions after Hephaestion’s death. Aelian (a Roman author of the late second and early third centuries AD, who wrote in Greek) says that Alexander hurled arms onto the funeral pyre, melting down gold and silver and burning expensive clothing along with the body. He sheared off his hair, emulating Achilles’ grief at the death of his friend Patroclus. According to Arrian (a Greek from Bithynia who became a Roman citizen during the reign of Hadrian), he spent all day and all night prostrate beside the corpse, and others said he hanged the doctor who attended his friend for giving him the wrong medicine.8 Alexander planned to build a hug
e monument to his friend and lover, a project that was scrapped when he himself died. The violence of his grief over Hephaestion’s death possibly contributed to Alexander’s own premature death.

  Why were the Greeks bisexual, with a strong proclivity to homosexuality, preferring usually boys and sometimes cohabiting with other adult males? One could make the argument that homosexuality was a traditional, long-standing condition of human males, practiced in antiquity not only by the Greeks but also by the Romans. There was no social stigma attached to the homosexual relationship. As long as the man did his familial duty and begot children, he was left alone to pursue whatever extramarital relationships he wanted. There was no AIDS in those days, and many Greek men viewed their wives only as breeding sows. It was only around AD 400, with the triumph of the Christian Church, that a revolution in gender relationships occurred.

  The Christian bishops and priests wanted to stress the unit of the intergendered family and community. They wanted also to give an enhanced dignity to women, hitherto so badly treated in the Greco-Roman world, because women made up more than half of the membership of the church. Furthermore, at a time of drastically declining population in the early Middle Ages, the bishops and priests sought to foster heterosexual copulation.

  Another way of looking at Greek homosexuality is to see it as following from the rigorous training in military life, which in turn fostered gay relationships. As is seen in the populations of jails today, men in close proximity to other men, with little recourse to female company, will frequently seek out homosexual relationships.

  The impact of homosexuality on the birthrate in some societies was drastic. In Sparta in the fourth century BC the personnel of the army declined from 10,000 to 1,000 available soldiers. Homosexuality was responsible for at least part of this decline. In sixteenth-century Persia, where homosexuality was also increasingly practiced, there was a sharp decline in population.

  A prominent and pioneering biographer of Alexander, W. W. Tarn, while denying that Alexander was homosexual, said that he loved no woman except his “terrible mother,” Olympias. Alexander’s relationship with his father and mother can be understood only in Freudian terms. Tarn never met Freud or came under his influence; thus he did not have an opportunity to understand the full dimensions of Alexander’s personality. This attitude was, however, very common among British academics during and after World War I: They fled from psychoanalytic models.

  Philip trusted Alexander to the extent of making him regent in his absence during the Byzantine campaign. While his father was away, a rebellion broke out in the north, and Alexander (then only sixteen) marched north to Maedi (a wild region of modern-day Bulgaria), conquered the city, and made it into a new place he called Alexandropolis, the first of many cities he would name after himself. Having possession of the Macedonian Great Seal gave him the right to do this, but it also indicates that his burgeoning ambition might pose a threat to his father. Philip was still vigorous and in the prime of his life. Nevertheless, he wrote to Alexander regularly, giving advice and occasional admonitions if he thought his son was doing something wrong.

  In the last two years of Philip’s life, however, Alexander, the presumptive heir to the throne, fell out of favor. The causes of this are complicated and open to conjecture. Philip, seeming to give new meaning to the adage “There’s no fool like an old fool,” fell madly in love with a much younger woman, Cleopatra. There had never been any hostilities surrounding his taking of other wives, but this time Philip repudiated Olympias on charges of adultery and implied that Alexander was illegitimate. The wedding feast was not a happy occasion for Alexander and Olympias. Green describes the confrontation:

  When Alexander walked in, and took the place of honor which was his by right—opposite his father—he said to Philip: “When my mother remarries I’ll invite you to her wedding,” not a remark calculated to improve anyone’s temper. During the evening, in true Macedonian fashion, a great deal of wine was drunk. At last Attalus rose, swaying, and proposed a toast, in which he “called upon the Macedonians to ask of the gods that from Philip and Cleopatra there might be born a legitimate successor to the kingdom.” The truth was finally out, and made public in a way which no one—least of all Alexander—could ignore.

  Infuriated, the crown prince sprang to his feet. Are you calling me a bastard?” he shouted, and flung his goblet in Attalus’ face. Attalus retaliated in kind. Philip, more drunk than either of them, drew his sword and lurched forward, bent on cutting down not Attalus (who had, after all, insulted his son and heir) but Alexander himself—a revealing detail. However, the drink he had taken, combined with his lame leg, made Philip trip over a stool and crash headlong to the floor. “That, gentlemen,” said Alexander, with icy contempt, “is the man who’s been preparing to cross from Europe into Asia—and he can’t even make it from one couch to the next!” Each of them, in that moment of crisis, had revealed what lay uppermost in his mind. Alexander thereupon flung out into the night, and by next morning both he and Olympias were over the frontier.”9

  Since Philip had raised Alexander to be his heir, followed his training and education closely, and appointed him regent in his absence, it is curious that he would antagonize Alexander at this point in his life. It has never been proved conclusively that Alexander wanted to usurp his father’s throne, although his mother had always encouraged him to be his own man and had always taken his side in battles between father and son. There was a natural rivalry, and now that Philip was getting ready to invade the Persian Empire, Alexander felt that his father would get the glory that should have been his. After all, he was the reincarnation of Achilles. Perhaps, as with many royal heirs, Alexander was openly showing too much impatience about gaining the throne from the long-lived Philip.

  When the new queen, Cleopatra, was delivered of her child some months later, however, it was a girl. Philip must have believed that he could not leave the country without an heir in place and with Alexander dangerous and discontented in exile. On her part Olympias was fomenting rebellion at her brother’s court in Epirus, so Philip, always a pragmatist, recalled Alexander from his exile and reinstated him as his heir, but by then Cleopatra was pregnant a second time.

  Receiving the news that his brother-in-law in Epirus was planning an invasion of Macedonia, Philip, in his usual fashion, proposed a marriage between Olympias’s brother and her daughter, also named Cleopatra. Although this was an incestuous relationship, it was approved nevertheless, and the wedding was set to take place in June.

  Shortly before the wedding, Philip’s wife, Cleopatra, again gave birth, this time to a son. If Olympias and Alexander were going to do anything about the succession, now was the time.

  Philip and his court were celebrating the wedding of one of his daughters when he was attacked with a short sword by a minor courtier. Green describes the assassination:

  Philip himself appeared, clad in a white ceremonial cloak, and walking alone between the two Alexanders—his son and his new son-in-law…. Ashe paused by the entrance to the arena a young man—a member of the Bodyguard itself—drew a short broad-bladed …sword from beneath his cloak, darted forward, and thrust it through Philip’s ribs up to the hilt, killing him instantly. He then made off in the direction of the city-gate, where he had horses waiting. There was a second’s stunned silence. Then a group of young Macedonian noblemen hurried after the assassin. He caught his foot in a vine-root, tripped, and fell. As he was scrambling up his pursuers overtook him, and ran him through with their javelins.10

  Philip’s assassin was a man named Pausanias, who according to some sources had been Philip’s lover several years before. Philip had broken off the relationship and had turned to another lover. There was a great scandal in the court about this sordid affair, and Attalus, whose niece Philip had married, decided to take matters into his own hands. He invited Pausanias to a banquet, got him drunk, and then he and his guests gang-raped the young man. Pausanias went to Philip asking for his help, but b
ecause of the alliance with Attalus, Philip was slow to do anything about it, so the brooding courtier exacted his revenge by killing the king. The other explanation is that the murder was arranged by Philip’s wife—Alexander’s mother, Olympias—and by Alexander himself because they were concerned about whether Alexander would actually gain the throne before Philip disinherited him.

  The two scenarios of Philip’s death—assassination by an aggrieved ex-lover and complicity by Olympias and Alexander in a plot to kill him—are not mutually exclusive. The sexually abused courtier who did the terrible deed could have been put up to it by Olympias and Alexander. The three courtiers who assaulted Pausanias were friends of Alexander’s and could easily have been enticed to kill Philip, through bribes of either money or position in Alexander’s new government. That they were responsible for Pausanias’s death gives credence to the idea that they put him up to the murder and then killed him so that he could not talk.