Thanks for the information, it's been a long time since I've had a scholarly discussion about Alexander and Hephaestion and it's a lot of fun *g*
It's very interesting about the implications behind a beard or lack thereof. Sounds like the generational shift is a universal one out of time almost. The desire to separate oneself from their parents' generation and who wanted/needed to do that more than Alexander. I totally agree on the wanting to keep a clean image for posterity, it certainly worked didn't it.
You bring up some very good and rational points here, which I figured would be the case. Guess it really is just a romantic fictional idea that I find appealing. Maybe the closest he would have come to submitting to Hephaestion would be in a playful manner, only in jest. I don't doubt that he was king down to the core, and from all the talk about how devoted Hephaestion was to him throughout their lives, I don't doubt that he treated Alexander as nothing less, in public and in private. Only, in private, they were probably able to be more relaxed, more like best friends but with that reminder in the back of their minds that one was the prince (and later king) and one was the companion.
There is one more thing that I'd like to ask, if you don't mind me picking your brain, and forgive me if you've already covered this in one of your other essays, but I've never quite understood what encompassed the "after sadness" that Alexander seemed prone to suffer after making love to Hephaestion or why he felt it. Mary Renault touched upon it briefly in Fire from Heaven but it was pretty cryptic, or at least it was for me, and so wasn't exactly illuminating.
Thanks for your reply. One of the things I was trying to say in these essays was that the traditional model for male/male relationships of an older, dominant male and a younger, submissive male, in Classical Greece may not have been relevant in Macedon, especially as in Alexander and Hephaestion's case as they were about the same age. I'm quite sure they did take turns being dominant when they were younger, but maybe less so if they continued to be lovers later on.
As for the idea of Hephaestion being Alexander's emotional bedrock, and the 'after sadness' Alexander felt after sex, I'm sorry to disillusion you, but these are complete inventions on Mary Renault's part and have no historical basis. Having said that though, Mary Renault's portrayal of Alex and Heph was what made me fall in love with them, but over the years since, I've come to realise that her portrayal of them had more to do with Mary Renault and the times she was writing in than the historical Alex and Heph.
Mary Renault was, I believe, a lesbian and though lesbian activity was not illegal in Britain at the time she was writing, male homosexual activity was illegal, and lesbians were of course not open about their affairs, because most people didn't believe women did such things. Male homosexuality was intellectually more acceptable to her audience because of the romance of ancient Greece and Rome, and I believe that this 'sadness' may have been Mary Renault's own reaction, and one she may have felt other homosexuals also experienced, to living a lie. I may be imagining this, but she might also have felt the essential emptiness of male or female homosexuality in that it cannot result in new life. Perhaps she regretted being childless.
However, I believe the ostensible reason she made Alexander experience this 'sadness' after sex was because he was meant to feel that by making his relationship with Hephaestion physical rather than spiritual, he was betraying Plato's ideal of sublime love which transcended physical gratification and concentrated on what was best for the development of the young man's character. Presumably Aristotle, as Plato's pupil, taught this ideal to Alexander and Hephaestion, but I don't think it works in Mary Renault's novels because she is just not explicit enough about it, and because she is associating guilt with sex, which is a Christian notion, not an ancient Greek one.
Perhaps she expected her (classically) educated audience to implicity understand what she was hinting at in her idea of platonic love, but this is part of her class snobbery (which I have issues with, but I won't go into it here). However, she may also be referring to Plutarch's view of Alexander's 'chastity and self-control'. Alexander was (to quote a historian who's name I can't remember at the moment) no prude. He didn't have sexual hangups, but he was very conscious of his reputation. He wanted to be seen as a king who was setting an example for others to follow, not as just a conqueror.
One of the reasons I also disagree with Mary Renault's protrayal of Alex and Heph's characters is that in her novels, she is attempting to justify homosexuality through psychoanalysis. She trained as a nurse in the 1930s when psychoanalysis was very popular and, as I've said elsewhere, is trying to 'explain' homosexuality by childhood experiences. This isn't necessary in an age when homosexuality was both fashionable and acceptable, and she ends up making Alexander appear emotionally damaged and, especially in The Persian Boy, ends up making Hephaestion nothing more than an emotional prop for Alexander. As a Hephaestion fan, I find that very difficult to accept!
I agree with you that they must have experimented with switching the erastes/eromenos roles between them when they were young because just from sheer curiosity you would think that'd be a fun thing to do. I read in an article once that Alexander didn't refer to Hephaestion as either, but simply Philalexandros, friend of Alexander, which makes perfect sense for the deep bond of friendship they shared throughout their lives together, all physical aspects aside.
No worries, I was too confused to be illusion-ed in the first place so I guess I shouldn't be surprised to learn that the supposed after sadness was a literary liberty taken by an author who had her own repressed opinions on how same-sex couplings must inevitably feel internally for different people, and I can imagine that, more for women than men, that is a logical lament to have.
But I have read in several places that Alexander did associate sex and sleep with his own mortality (which I see you mentioned above, Plutarch is probably the one I read about), which is why he strove so hard to cement his immortality before his time was due so that his legacy would live on in the same glorious fashion as Achilles. I have no doubt that he had no sexual hangups, he probably loved Hephaestion even more around the time his mother sent round that courtesan whose name I can't spell, because Hephaestion was a calm oasis in a desert of passive-aggressive melodrama then and later.
As for Hephaestion being used as an emotional prop for Alexander in The Persian Boy, I'm right there with you, how rude! I have always felt sorry for him once Bagoas came around, but of course now that we've been talking I'm coming to realize that I've probably been operating under a bunch of false assumptions and facts, which kind of annoys me because I am a big Hephaestion fan too and don't like being mislead by sources who profess to be stating the facts when there is sometimes very little way to ascertain their veracity (but I guess part of it has to be my fault for blindly believing them upon first glance).
Guess that's the dangers of reading historical fiction. It's hard to distinguish the historical from the fiction sometimes. That's why fanfic is so fun. You pretty much start out with the historical part and then create your fiction any way that pleases you and just have to remember to remind your readers to take it all in with a grain of salt.
Sorry, I also forgot to add in that Mary Renault may also have had in mind Plutarch's remark that Alexander said 'sex and sleep remind me that I'm mortal'. Plutarch says he meant 'exhaustion and pleasure stem from the same human weakness'. It's a bit difficult to understand what he means by this unless he's talking about human physical frailty. I think Alexander meant that the physical demands of his body hampered his achievements and that he wanted to do more than he actually could. I don't think it meant that he had any hangups about sex!
That's kind of a vague statement to try and decipher if you don't know what Alexander was referring to when he said 'human weakness', isn't it. You'd think that getting hurt in battle, and just the act of fighting in general would be the thing to remind him that he was mortal. Sex and sleep, unless you overdo it in the bedroom or die randomly in your sleep, don't really connote a proximity to the chances of dying, so I think it's interesting he thought that at all. We all know he had a bit of a god complex so it makes sense that he would want to be able to do herculean feats and be annoyed by the mere mortal physical limitations of his body. Really makes you want to be able to just ask him, what did you mean by that exactly?
Good point about the fighting bit reminding him that he was mortal, but I have another theory about the 'sex and sleep' quote and that's that Alexander was being flippant. We know he could get annoyed with flatterers and when he had been wounded in the foot or ankle one time, someone commented about ichor, the blood of the gods. Alexander snapped, 'that's blood, not ichor'. Maybe Alexander got fed up with people telling him he was like a god so he came up with 'sex and sleep remind me that I'm mortal' because he liked both, his body demanded both, but he denied himself both to prove his self-control (We know he didn't sleep much on campaign but did when he was drinking).
It's very interesting about the implications behind a beard or lack thereof. Sounds like the generational shift is a universal one out of time almost. The desire to separate oneself from their parents' generation and who wanted/needed to do that more than Alexander. I totally agree on the wanting to keep a clean image for posterity, it certainly worked didn't it.
You bring up some very good and rational points here, which I figured would be the case. Guess it really is just a romantic fictional idea that I find appealing. Maybe the closest he would have come to submitting to Hephaestion would be in a playful manner, only in jest. I don't doubt that he was king down to the core, and from all the talk about how devoted Hephaestion was to him throughout their lives, I don't doubt that he treated Alexander as nothing less, in public and in private. Only, in private, they were probably able to be more relaxed, more like best friends but with that reminder in the back of their minds that one was the prince (and later king) and one was the companion.
There is one more thing that I'd like to ask, if you don't mind me picking your brain, and forgive me if you've already covered this in one of your other essays, but I've never quite understood what encompassed the "after sadness" that Alexander seemed prone to suffer after making love to Hephaestion or why he felt it. Mary Renault touched upon it briefly in Fire from Heaven but it was pretty cryptic, or at least it was for me, and so wasn't exactly illuminating.
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As for the idea of Hephaestion being Alexander's emotional bedrock, and the 'after sadness' Alexander felt after sex, I'm sorry to disillusion you, but these are complete inventions on Mary Renault's part and have no historical basis. Having said that though, Mary Renault's portrayal of Alex and Heph was what made me fall in love with them, but over the years since, I've come to realise that her portrayal of them had more to do with Mary Renault and the times she was writing in than the historical Alex and Heph.
Mary Renault was, I believe, a lesbian and though lesbian activity was not illegal in Britain at the time she was writing, male homosexual activity was illegal, and lesbians were of course not open about their affairs, because most people didn't believe women did such things. Male homosexuality was intellectually more acceptable to her audience because of the romance of ancient Greece and Rome, and I believe that this 'sadness' may have been Mary Renault's own reaction, and one she may have felt other homosexuals also experienced, to living a lie. I may be imagining this, but she might also have felt the essential emptiness of male or female homosexuality in that it cannot result in new life. Perhaps she regretted being childless.
However, I believe the ostensible reason she made Alexander experience this 'sadness' after sex was because he was meant to feel that by making his relationship with Hephaestion physical rather than spiritual, he was betraying Plato's ideal of sublime love which transcended physical gratification and concentrated on what was best for the development of the young man's character. Presumably Aristotle, as Plato's pupil, taught this ideal to Alexander and Hephaestion, but I don't think it works in Mary Renault's novels because she is just not explicit enough about it, and because she is associating guilt with sex, which is a Christian notion, not an ancient Greek one.
Perhaps she expected her (classically) educated audience to implicity understand what she was hinting at in her idea of platonic love, but this is part of her class snobbery (which I have issues with, but I won't go into it here). However, she may also be referring to Plutarch's view of Alexander's 'chastity and self-control'. Alexander was (to quote a historian who's name I can't remember at the moment) no prude. He didn't have sexual hangups, but he was very conscious of his reputation. He wanted to be seen as a king who was setting an example for others to follow, not as just a conqueror.
One of the reasons I also disagree with Mary Renault's protrayal of Alex and Heph's characters is that in her novels, she is attempting to justify homosexuality through psychoanalysis. She trained as a nurse in the 1930s when psychoanalysis was very popular and, as I've said elsewhere, is trying to 'explain' homosexuality by childhood experiences. This isn't necessary in an age when homosexuality was both fashionable and acceptable, and she ends up making Alexander appear emotionally damaged and, especially in The Persian Boy, ends up making Hephaestion nothing more than an emotional prop for Alexander. As a Hephaestion fan, I find that very difficult to accept!
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No worries, I was too confused to be illusion-ed in the first place so I guess I shouldn't be surprised to learn that the supposed after sadness was a literary liberty taken by an author who had her own repressed opinions on how same-sex couplings must inevitably feel internally for different people, and I can imagine that, more for women than men, that is a logical lament to have.
But I have read in several places that Alexander did associate sex and sleep with his own mortality (which I see you mentioned above, Plutarch is probably the one I read about), which is why he strove so hard to cement his immortality before his time was due so that his legacy would live on in the same glorious fashion as Achilles. I have no doubt that he had no sexual hangups, he probably loved Hephaestion even more around the time his mother sent round that courtesan whose name I can't spell, because Hephaestion was a calm oasis in a desert of passive-aggressive melodrama then and later.
As for Hephaestion being used as an emotional prop for Alexander in The Persian Boy, I'm right there with you, how rude! I have always felt sorry for him once Bagoas came around, but of course now that we've been talking I'm coming to realize that I've probably been operating under a bunch of false assumptions and facts, which kind of annoys me because I am a big Hephaestion fan too and don't like being mislead by sources who profess to be stating the facts when there is sometimes very little way to ascertain their veracity (but I guess part of it has to be my fault for blindly believing them upon first glance).
Guess that's the dangers of reading historical fiction. It's hard to distinguish the historical from the fiction sometimes. That's why fanfic is so fun. You pretty much start out with the historical part and then create your fiction any way that pleases you and just have to remember to remind your readers to take it all in with a grain of salt.
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