Alexander the Great: His Lustful Relationship with His Best Friend and a Eunuch Courtier

The Netflix documentary series Alexander the Great: the creation of a god Start with toe caps. At the beginning he delves into a topic that still drives historians crazy: the sexuality of the king of Macedonia.

8 minutes into the first episode, “The Young King”, Alejandro gets into an argument with his friend Hephaestion and, immediately afterwards, goes to take a bath with him. There they hug and kiss like good lovers.

The sequence that caused such a stir on the networks (in Dr. Salima Ikramof the American University in Cairo, e Lloyd Llewellyn-Jonesfrom Cardiff University, Wales.

“Alejandro grew up with two close companions, and one of them, Hephaestion was not only a good companion, but perhaps his great love. Homosexual relationships were the norm throughout the Greek world,” says Ikram.

And Llewellyn-Jones joins in: “The Greeks didn’t have a word for homosexuality or being gay. It wasn’t in his vocabulary. “It was just a sexual thing.”

Alexander the Great and Hephaestion

The King’s sexual preferences are difficult to follow because there are no sources that can verify them and all the books on the subject come after the character. Therefore, when drawing conclusions, historians take into account the context of the time in which he lived.

Without being one hundred percent sure, many agree – although no one claims it – that Alexander’s greatest love was Hephaestion, commander of his army’s cavalry, son of a Macedonian nobleman and, moreover, friend of his whole life.

As good sons of the Macedonian aristocracy, Hephaestion and Alexander would have studied together under the tutelage of Aristotlea philosopher who considered relationships based exclusively on carnal pleasure shameful.

For this reason it is said that Alexander did not accept that handsome young men were offered to him to buy and that he treated his lovers with kindness.

The British historian Paul Cartledge He says that “almost certainly” the relationship between the two went beyond friendship, as Greek-Macedonian customs favored an active sexual life.

Your colleague, Robin Lane Foxhe agrees: “In his youth Hephaestion was his great friend and certainly the sexual element had developed by now”.

When Hephaestion died, Alexander felt so ill that he fasted for several days. He prepared an impressive funeral for him in Babylon and asked to be recognized as a god.

Alexander died shortly after Hephaestion, and some argue that his death occurred, in part, because he neglected his health after losing his friend.

Alexander the Great and Bagoas

Another of Alexander’s lovers would have been the courtier Bagoa. With him, a eunuch and exceptionally beautiful, she would have had a purely sexual bond. Fox noted that there is direct and indirect evidence of their relationship.”pure physical desire”.

Maria Renaultauthor of a book on Alexander and the courtier, said that “for the Macedonians, aware of their race, Bagoas was a modest eccentricity of Alexander and the less said about it, the better (…) it is not strange that, at least once Alejandro’s sexual requests were satisfied.”

Let us remember that these statements are based, as we anticipated, on the concept of homosexuality as it was understood today at that time.

Alexander, however, was a transgressor in the 300s BC for not loving young people, but on the contrary: for maintaining a long-term relationship with a man of his age.

Alexander’s women

Although this article focuses on the military man’s two alleged mistresses, Alejandro had more female lovers than male. And he has been married three times.

Their wives were Roxana of Bactria, Barsine-Estatira AND Parysatis. With the first she had a son, Alexander IV of Macedoniaborn after his death.

It is said that Alexander may have had another child following an affair with a supposed concubine, but this version is more controversial.