Summary

Hephaistos, son of Amintore (Pella, c. 356 B.C.E. - Ecbatana, 324 B.C.E.), was an ancient Macedonian nobleman and general, though of probable Athenian ancestry, in the army of Alexander the Great.He was "by far the dearest of all the king's friends, reared as equals with him and keeper of all his secrets." Their intense relationship, for several sources a true love affair, lasted a lifetime and was compared by others, but before that by the two concerned themselves, to the mythical one between Achilles and Patroclus. In particular, among contemporary authors, one of the most internationally credited is Robin Lane Fox, historian, professor emeritus of classical studies at Oxford University and biographer of Alexander, who writes, "Hephaestion was the one whom Alexander loved, and for the rest of their lives their relationship remained as intimate as to this day it is irretrievable: Alexander fell only once, the philosophers of the cynical current said long after his death, and it was by Hephaestion's thighs."

His military career was notable: a member and then head of Alexander the Great's honor guard (the seven somatofylakes), he later went on to command the cavalry of the Etherians and was entrusted with many other prominent tasks throughout the decade of Alexander's Asian campaign, including (and certainly no less important) diplomatic missions, major river-crossing works, sieges, and founding of new settlements of habitation. In addition to his military, engineering and political activities, he corresponded with the philosophers Aristotle and Senocrates, and actively supported Alexander's policy aimed at the integration of Greeks and Persians. The king eventually made him his own second-in-command, conferring on him the office of kylarch of the empire, and wanted him a member of the royal family by giving him in marriage Dripetide, younger sister of his second wife Statira II, both daughters of Darius III of Persia. At the time of his sudden death in Ecbatana (today's Hamadan), Alexander was overcome with grief and wished to appeal to the oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the Libyan oasis of Siwa in order to ascribe divine status to his deceased friend, and Hephaestion was consequently honored as a hero. At the time of his own death only eight months later, Alexander was still planning the erection of great monuments to celebrate the memory of his life's companion.

Youth and education

Hephaestion's exact age has not been handed down: no biography of him was ever written probably also due to the fact that Alexander survived him for a very short time, and the other diadoks, hard-pressed to fight over the partitioning of the huge inheritance, had no interest in celebrating anyone other than themselves. According to most scholars, Hephaistion's age must not have been very different from Alexander's, and it is therefore possible to assume that he was born around 356 B.C.E.: it is said that he became a page at the Macedonian court in 343, following the fate common to so many other scions of the aristocracy, and it is therefore likely that his meeting with the future conqueror took place around this time. One of the few anecdotes relating to Hephaistion's youth is owed to the Romance of Alexander, where, in connection with the fabled participation of the future king of Macedonia in the chariot race of the Olympics, we read that "... one day when Alexander was fifteen years old sailing with Hephaistion, his friend, he reached Pisa with ease . The fact that Alexander's exact age is mentioned provides an additional clue as to Hephaestion's education, since, at that age, Alexander was with his companions in the Macedonian locality of Mieza studying with Aristotle, and, although the son of Amintore is never explicitly mentioned among them, his close friendship with the then fifteen-year-old future king of Macedonia suggests that he too should, in all likelihood, be counted among Aristotle's pupils. Even more significant in this regard is the fact that Hephaistion's name was later included in a list of correspondents of the great philosopher The letters have not come down to us, but the fact that they are quoted in a historical list suggests that their contents must have been of some significance: Hephaistion evidently had received a respectable education and one such as to induce Aristotle to entertain a not easy correspondence with him through the expanding empire of Alexander the Great.

A few years after Mieza's lectures, Hephaistion's name does not appear in the list of several of Alexander's friends who were exiled by Philip II of Macedon as a result of the young prince's failed attempt to replace his half-brother Arrideus as a suitor for the hand of the daughter of the lord of Caria, Pixodar: there is to be noted, however, that the exiles, Ptolemy, Nearchus, Harpalus, Erigius and Laomedon of Mytilene were generally older than Alexander, Erigius even by about a quarter of a century, while Hephaistion was a contemporary of his age and thus his influence might not have been considered as suspect by Philip. In any case, whatever his views on the whole affair, Hephaestion, like many of Alexander's other childhood companions, was not sent into exile.

In conclusion, however, if very little can be reconstructed of Hephaestion's boyhood and education, what is found is worth accrediting what is known of his later life: his friendship with Alexander was long lasting, as was his stay at the court of Pella, where he too shared the same education as the future Great King of Greece and Asia. With such a promising start, age and experience would later help make Hephaistion son of Amintore one day the most powerful man in Alexander's empire, second only to the king himself.

Career

Having shared the kind of education imparted to Alexander, Hephaistion certainly learned to fight and ride from a very young age and probably had his first taste of military life during Philip II's Danubian campaign in 342 BC, or at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, when he was not even 20 years old, but his name is still not mentioned in the lists of high-ranking officers during the battles of Alexander's Danubian campaign in 335 B.C., or in the first phase of the invasion of Persia (as, for that matter, are those of the king's other youthful friends).

The first time Hephaestion's name appears in war reports is on the occasion of a political mission of considerable importance: after the Battle of Issus (333 B.C.), as Alexander proceeded southward along the Phoenician coast, the city of Sidon surrendered to the Macedonian king, and Hephaestion was even given "...charge to appoint as king the one of the Sidonians whom he considered the most deserving of such a high office." He then assumed the appropriate information and selected a man, Abdalonymus, who was indeed of distant royal ancestry, but whose integrity had reduced him to working as a gardener. The popularity of the choice in Sidon and the valor subsequently demonstrated by the chosen one would indeed testify to considerable discernment skills on the part of the young Macedonian.

After the siege and overthrow of Tyre (332 B.C.), Alexander gave Hephaistion command of the fleet, with the task of following the coast by heading south to Gaza, their next target, while he himself continued overland at the head of the army. Hephaistion's task was not the easiest, as the one entrusted to him was a regimented fleet made up of the naval craft of a variety of disparate allies that had to be held together with a great deal of patience and energy. The fleet carried the war machines essential for the conduct of the siege, which had to be unloaded by makeshift means, transported over rough terrain, and finally properly reassembled.

According to Andrew Chugg, who cites the testimony of Marsyas of Pella, one of Alexander's friends, as reported by Harpocration in the second century CE, and who nonetheless finds substantial confirmation for it in an oration by Aeschines contemporaneous with the events, Hephaestion may then have been involved, during his subsequent stay in Egypt, in a complex diplomatic game, acting as an intermediary between Demosthenes, head of the anti-Macedonian party in Athens, and Alexander. Indeed, he appears to have been approached by a messenger of the Athenian politician for the probable purpose of examining the possibility of some reconciliation. The exact terms of the matter, and Hephaistion's role in it, are not known, but Athens' inactivity during the subsequent war proclaimed by the king of Sparta, Agides III, would seem to argue in favor of a positive outcome to the contacts. Chugg concludes by noting that, "if Hephaestion succeeded in persuading Alexander to reach an accommodation with Demosthenes at this critical juncture, as would seem likely from the circumstances, then he was responsible to a significant degree for saving the situation in Greece for Macedonia by preventing Agides' revolt from spreading to Athens and its allies."

It is almost certain that, on his return from Egypt, it was Hephaestion who led the Macedonian vanguard sent to build bridges across the Euphrates so as to make passage possible for Alexander's army. Darius III of Persia sent his own satrap, Mazeus, to occupy the opposite bank of the river while the Macedonian genius was at work building the bridges. Mazeo, after abandoning his position on the Euphrates, rather inopinently, and allowing Alexander to cross, would shortly thereafter be, at the Battle of Gaugamela (331 B.C.), that commander of the Persian right wing who threw to the nettles an almost certain victory by abandoning the area he was supposed to hold, and would later become the trusted satrap of Babylon, in the name of Alexander. British historian Robin Lane Fox has good play in advancing the very plausible hypothesis that Hephaistion may have made diplomatic contacts with Mazeus during the Euphrates confrontation to essay his willingness to change sides: "It is presumable that the battle of Gaugamela was won in part on the banks of the Euphrates and that Mazeus' restoration was, rather than an act of magnanimity, a previously agreed compensation."

It is on the occasion of Gaugamela that Hephaestion's rank is first mentioned as "...chief of the somatofìlakes" (σωματοφύλακες, bodyguards) of Alexander. This was not the royal squadron, called the "àghema" (ἅγημα), charged with protecting the king during battles (at the time probably commanded by Cleitus the Black), but a small group of seven close companions of Alexander who were specifically given the honor of fighting alongside the king. Hephaestion was certainly in the thick of the fighting along with Alexander, since Arrian relates that he was wounded, and Curtius Rufus specifies that it was a spear wound in one arm.

After Gaugamela there are the first indications of Alexander's willingness to initiate an integration effort with the Persians, and of Hephaistion's agreement with this policy, so unpopular among the Macedonians. In particular, it is recounted that one evening in Babylon, Alexander noticed a local noblewoman as she was being urged, against her dignified reluctance, to perform in a show for the victorious troops. He not only ordered that she be freed and her property returned to her, but "...on the following day he instructed Hephaistion to have all the prisoners taken to the palace. Here, after examining the nobility of each, he had those who emerged by social background separated from the mass. "Alexander had noticed that the Persian nobles were being treated with little dignity and wanted to remedy this. That he chose Hephaistion to help him shows that he could rely on his young friend's tact and understanding.However, Alexander could also lean on Hephaistion when it came to bringing firmness and decisiveness to bear. On the occasion of a plot against his life in 330 B.C.E., the possible involvement of a high-ranking official like Philota caused much concern, but it was Hephaestion himself, along with Craterus and Ceno, who insisted that torture, which was customary on such occasions when all the background was to be uncovered, should be carried out, and indeed dealt with it personally.

After Philota's execution, Hephaistion, despite having no previous experience in the matter, was appointed commander (Hipparchus)-alongside the experienced Clitus, as second Hipparchus-of the cavalry of the Ethers, a position previously occupied by Philota alone. This dual appointment was a way of satisfying two different tendencies that were gaining strength in the army: one, personified by Hephaistion, largely in favor of the integration policy pursued by the king; the other, supported in particular by the veterans of Philip's time and well represented by Cleitus, stubbornly refractory to the Persian world. The cavalry fared well under the new command and showed itself equal to the new tasks given it, from the unusual tactics needed against the Scythian nomads to the initiatives taken in 328 to combat revolts in the steppes of Central Asia. The army moved from Balkh, the capital of Bactria, in five columns, deploying its action through the valleys between the Amu Darya (Osso) and Syr Darya (Iassarte), with the aim of pacifying Sogdiana. Hephaestion commanded one of the columns and, after his arrival in Samarkand (called by the Greeks, Marakanda), he took charge of the colonization of the region.

In the spring of 327 B.C.E., the army moved toward India, and Alexander divided his forces, personally leading one part of it north through the Swat Valley (then called, Uḍḍiyana), and entrusting the other to Hephaestion and Perdiccas to lead it through the Khyber Pass. Hephaestion's orders were to "...conquer, by force or by diplomacy, all the territories on their march, and, when they reached the Indus, to arrange what was necessary for the crossing." They were then in unfamiliar territory, whose political and geographical horizons were unfamiliar, and Hephaestion nevertheless managed to arrive on the Indus after conquering all the territory they crossed, including the city of Puskalavati, which endured a thirty-day siege and whose governor was then routinely put to death as was the rule for those who opposed Macedonian conquest manu militari. Once on the Indus, Hephaestion proceeded to build the boats and bridge necessary for the crossing. Alexander had on repeated occasions the need to divide his forces, and the command was, from time to time, given to several of the highest-ranking officers, but it appears that Hephaistion was chosen when the objectives were not perfectly clear from the outset and Alexander therefore felt the need for someone capable of making autonomous choices, but in accordance with the general needs of the expedition.

Hephaestion took part in a memorable cavalry charge in the battle on the Idaspe River (326 B.C.), and then, when the army began its return journey, he was again entrusted with one half of it, including elite troops and two hundred elephants, to lead it overland to the southwest along the banks of the Idaspe itself. The rest of the army, commanded directly by Alexander, traveled by ship, on the river, with a fleet whose construction had been financed by the most eminent courtiers. Arrian places Hephaestion first among these honorary trierarchs, indicating the position of pre-eminence he had now acquired at court. Upon entering hostile territory, after the river fleet had been damaged by the rapids, Alexander decided to divide his forces again, this time into three parts, and Hephaistion was instructed to take the leadership of what was left of the fleet and "continue the navigation to cut off the fugitives," while Alexander would follow overland with the fighting forces, and Ptolemy led, in the rear guard, armies and elephants. In the assault on the fortress of Multan, however, Alexander was very seriously wounded in the chest, with probable lung involvement, and, this time, Hephaistion had to assume de facto command of the expedition at least in the first stage of the journey to the sea along the course of the Indus. Upon reaching the coast, he arranged for the construction of a fortress and port for ships on the river delta (Pattala).

Hephaestion followed Alexander in the subsequent disastrous crossing of the Makran Desert in the coastal area of present-day Belucistan, during which the inveterate Macedonian army was severely decimated along with its entire sizeable retinue of civilians, and after their desperate arrival in Susa, he was decorated for his valor. After that, he would never fight again, with only a few months remaining to him by then, and, after rising to the rank of de facto deputy military commander of Alexander, he instead acquired a formal role as deputy to the king in the civilian sphere, incidentally probably much more conducive to him than the military one, and was appointed "chiliarch" (Greek term for the Persian hazarapatish) of the empire, a kind of grand vizier, second only to the king.

Personal relationships

Very little is known about Hephaestion's personal relationships, apart from his exceptionally close relationship with Alexander the Great. The latter was an extraordinary and charismatic figure who had many friends, but none comparable with Hephaistion: theirs was a friendship through and through, one that was forged in boyhood and would later last beyond adolescence, passing unscathed through Alexander's ascension to the throne, the harshness of military campaigns, the blandishments of court life, and even through their marriages.

Their old master, Aristotle, described the friendship, speaking of "...one soul dwelling in two bodies," and that they themselves considered their friendship to be such is evidenced by an incident that occurred in the aftermath of the battle of Issus and reported concordantly by Diodorus Siculus. According to their accounts, Alexander and Hephaistion went together to visit the royal family of Darius III that had been captured at the end of the battle, intending to reassure the captive queens of their fate. As they entered the tent, the noblewomen made an act of honor in the Persian manner toward the dashing Hephaestion, very handsome and certainly taller than Alexander, taking him for the king. Immediately put somewhat on notice, the queen mother, Sisigambi, threw herself at Alexander's feet begging forgiveness for the mistake, but the king heartened her by saying, "You were not mistaken, mother, since he too is Alexander." Their mutual affection was in no way kept secret, as is confirmed by their own words. Hephaestion, responding to a letter from Alexander's mother Olympias, had occasion to write, "...  You know that Alexander means more to us than anything else." Arrian reports that the king, after Hephaestion's death, called him "...the friend I valued as my own life." Paul Cartledge describes their intimacy by saying, "Alexander seems in affect to have referred to Hephaestion as his alter ego."

Their friendship also resulted in close operational cooperation; in everything Alexander undertook he found Hephaistion systematically at his side. The two worked very well together, and if one studies Hephaistion's career, one easily finds the trace of Alexander's constant and growing confidence in him. As the expedition to India began, after the generals of the older generation were gone, there were examples among the officers of the new generation of betrayal, of failure to share Alexander's aspirations for a growing integration of the Persians into the army. Repeatedly, when Alexander found himself in need of dividing his forces, he entrusted a part of them to Hephaistion, perhaps flanking him with someone equipped with greater military skills, knowing full well that in him he found a person of unquestionable loyalty, who understood and shared his aspirations from the depths and who, not least, was also capable of carrying out the tasks entrusted to him to a successful conclusion.

Hephaestion always participated, in the front row, in the council meetings that the king regularly held with his principal officers, but he was the only one with whom Alexander also confronted in private, exposing to him his innermost thoughts, hopes, and hidden plans. Curtius Rufus claims that Hephaistion was a sharer of all his secrets, while Plutarch describes the occasion when Alexander tried to impose, in a kind of test banquet, the extension to the Greeks as well of the obligation to pay tribute to the king, in the Persian manner, the kind of greeting termed proskýnesis (προσκύνησις, Italianized into the rare proscinèsi), and insinuates that Hephaistion was the only one in advance privy to the matter and probably the organizer himself of the banquet and of the whole ceremony to be performed at it.

According to Aezione's depiction of Alexander's first marriage, in the description handed down by Lucian, Hephaistion was his "flashlight bearer" (best man), thus demonstrating not only his friendship alien to jealousy, but also his support for Alexander's policies, since the king's choice of an Asian bride was certainly not popular among his European retinue.

With their return to Persia, Hephaistion, by virtue of the position of chilarch entrusted to him, became officially, after having long been de facto, the second highest authority in the empire, and also Alexander's brother-in-law. Hammond summarizes their public relationship very well: "At the time of his death Hephaistion held the highest military command post, that of the cavalry of the Ethers, and had repeatedly been Alexander's deputy in the hierarchy of the Asiatic court, eventually assuming the post of chiliarch that had been Nabarzane's under Darius III. In this way Alexander honored Hephaistion both as the closest of friends and as the most distinguished of his field marshals."

It has been suggested that, in addition to being close friends, Alexander and Hephaestion were also lovers. None of the ancient histories seem to state this explicitly, and by the time those that have come down to us were written (at least three centuries later) homosexual relationships were looked upon less favorably than in ancient Greece and the process of erasing Hephaestion's role from history had already begun, a process that has continued, albeit intermittently, into modern times. Yet Arrian very significantly described the occasion when Alexander and Hephaestion wanted to solemnly identify themselves with Achilles and Patroclus, whom the public opinion of the time, Plato first, acknowledged to have been lovers. The episode occurred at the beginning of the expedition to Asia, when Alexander led a military contingent to visit Troy, the stage for the events narrated in his beloved Iliad. He ran naked, along with his companions, to the tombs of the heroes and laid a wreath on Achilles' tomb, while Hephaistion did the same with that of Patroclus. Arrian, very discreetly, draws no conclusions, but Robin Lane Fox, writing in 1973, argues, "It was a very remarkable tribute, spectacularly rendered, and it is also the first time in Alexander's career that Hephaestion is mentioned. Already the two were on intimate terms and called them Patroclus and Achilles. The comparison would last until the end of their days, indicating their love affair, for in Alexander's time it was commonly admitted that Achilles and Patroclus were in a relationship, which Homer never mentioned directly," although from a simple reading of the twenty-third canto of the Iliad, it is hard not to detect, even without the aid of psychoanalysis, how the words uttered by Patroclus' shadow or those of Achilles, as well as his behaviors, demonstrate an obvious character that is not simply amicable, however profound, but actually betrays a substratum of an erotic, albeit not "overtly" sexual, character.

Hephaistion and Alexander grew up in a time and environment in which male bisexuality was widely permitted and even regulated by law, and in any case not frowned upon by common opinion, at least to the extent that it was contained within the limits, legal and social, that were set for it. The Greeks "experienced relationships between men very differently from the way in which (obviously, with exceptions) those who make a homosexual choice today do: for the Greeks and Romans, in fact (again with exceptions), homosexuality was not an exclusive choice. Loving another man was not an option outside the norm, different, somehow deviant. It was just a part of the life experience: it was the manifestation of both a sentimental and a sexual drive that in the span of existence alternated with and complemented (sometimes at the same time) love for a woman..." While, however, the possibility of same-sex relationships was generally admitted, the pattern followed by such relationships differed from place to place. Roman and later writers, taking the Athenian model as a point of reference, tended to assume either that love relationships between the two were limited to adolescence and later left alone, or that one of the two was older, and thus acted as erastès (lover) while the younger acted as eromenos (beloved).

The former thesis has continued to be in vogue to the present day, with fiction writers, such as Mary Renault, and professional historians, such as Paul Cartledge, among the supporters. The latter stated, "Rumor ran - and for once the rumor was surely correct - that he and Alexander 'had once been' more than just good friends." Elianus, on the other hand, makes his own the second hypothesis, where, in describing the visit to Troy, he uses an expression of this kind: "Alexander placed a wreath on the tomb of Achilles and Hephaistion one on that of Patroclus, intending by this to signify that he was the herómenos of Alexander, just as Patroclus had been of Achilles."

However, what was at home in Athens and Attica, was not necessarily so in Dorian circles and in Macedonia, where, as Lane Fox says, "...the descendants of the Dorians were thought and indeed expected to be openly homosexual, all the more so if they belonged to the ruling class; moreover, the Macedonian kings had long insisted on their pure Dorian lineage." And this was not the result of a tendency à la mode, but belonged to the intrinsic Dorian, and therefore Macedonian, way of being, and had far more to do with the sacred Battalion of Thebes (or the customs of the Spartiates or Cretans), than with Athens. In light of the above, it should come as no surprise that there are indications that their love affair lasted a lifetime. Lucian, in his work Pro lapsu inter salutandum (In defense of a lapse in salutandum), tells of a morning when Hephaestion expressed himself in a way that gave the impression that he had spent the night in Alexander's tent; Plutarch describes the intimacy that existed between the two by recounting that Hephaestion was in the habit of reading Alexander's letters together with him, or that once when he happened to find a confidential letter from Olympias open, the king ideally sealed his lips by resting his ring on it, indicating that the contents of the missive were to remain secret; in an apocryphal letter attributed to the philosopher Diogenes and addressed to a now made man Alexander, heavy allusion is made to his tendency to allow himself to be commanded ". .. by the thighs of Hephaestion."

No other circumstance better shows the nature and duration of their relationship than Alexander's superhuman grief at the time of his friend's death. As Andrew Chugg says, "...it is surely incredible that Alexander's reaction to Hephaistion's death could signify anything other than the closest of relationships imaginable." The many and varied ways, both spontaneous and intentional, in which Alexander externalized his distress are detailed further below, but with reference to the nature of their relationship, one stands out over the others in significance: Arrian relates that the king"...threw himself on the body of his friend and lay there in tears for most of the day, refusing to detach himself from him until he was dragged away by force by his ethereals."

Such all-encompassing love often leaves little room for other feelings. Hephaistion had a lover who was also his best friend, his king, his commander, and so it is no wonder that we have not heard of any other great affection or friendship in his lifetime. Nor is there any indication, however, that he was less than popular and well-liked in the group of the king's companions and friends, who had grown up together and worked together so well for so many years.It is possible that he was very close to Perdiccas, since it was in collaboration with him that he led the mission to the Indus during which Puskalavati was conquered, and, at the time, his position next to Alexander would have enabled him, at the very least, to exclude unwelcome companions in adventure. The two achieved all the goals that had been set for the expedition, which indicates that they worked well together and that Hephaistion found in the irrepressible Perdiccas a congenial companion. It should also be noted that it was their two cavalry regiments that were chosen by Alexander for the crossing of the Idaspe River before the battle against the Indian king Poro. On that occasion the superb teamwork would prove to be of supreme importance.

However, it would be erroneous to infer from the above that Hephaistion was loved and appreciated by all. Outside the inner circle of the Macedonian high command, he too had his enemies, and this is clear from Arrian's comment on Alexander's grief: "All writers have agreed that it was great, but personal prejudice, for or against either Hephaestion or Alexander himself, has differently colored the accounts of how he externalized it."

However, given the factions and jealousies that tend to breed in every court, and given that Hephaestion was enormously close to the greatest, perhaps, of monarchs the Western world has ever known, it should be emphasized how little enmity he was able, in the end, to arouse. Arrian again makes mention of a quarrel with Alexander's secretary, Eumenes, but, because of a missing page in the manuscript of the text, we do not know the details of the affair, except that Hephaistion was eventually induced, unwillingly, to make peace. It is, however, Plutarch (who dedicated one of his parallel Lives to Eumenes) who reminds us that it was a matter of housing granted to a flute player, which suggests that the quarrel, which erupted over trifles, was in fact an expression of a deeper antagonism brooding over time. What motivated the antagonism is not known with certainty, but it is not hard to imagine that the powers or, depending on one's point of view, the meddling, of the new chiliarch may well have vexed the king's jaded secretary.

Only in one instance is Hephaistion known to have clashed with one of the old officers of the Aethians, and that was with Craterus. In this case it is easier to argue that the resentment might have been mutual, since that one was one of the officers who most vociferously opposed Alexander's policy tending toward the integration of Greeks and Orientals, whereas Hephaistion was a staunch supporter of it. Plutarch tells the story this way, "For this reason a feeling of hostility arose and deepened between the two and they often came into open conflict. Once, during the expedition to India, they even crossed swords and exchanged blows ...".Alexander, who also held Craterus in high esteem as an extremely competent officer, was forced to intervene and publicly had some very harsh words for both of them. The fact, however, that the physical clash had occurred, stands as an indication of the extent to which the question of integration was making tempers boil, and also the extent to which Hephaistion, who was treated on the occasion harshly by the king, identified Alexander's aspirations with his own. It was, however, in the spring of 324 that Hephaistion gave the ultimate proof of this identification, when he agreed (nothing suggests less than willingly) to marry Dripetides, daughter of Darius III and sister of Statira II, who had also contextually gone to marry Alexander himself, in the course of the Susa marriage ceremonies. Up to this time Hephaestion's name had never been attached to any woman, nor, for that matter, to any man other than Alexander. Of her very short married life nothing is known except that, at the time of Alexander's subsequent death, which occurred eight months after Hephaestion's, Dripetides still mourned the bridegroom to whom she had been united for only four months.

For Alexander, marrying a daughter of Darius (and, together, as a third wife, Parisatides, daughter and sister of the previous Great Kings, Artaxerxes III and IV) constituted an important political act, allowing him to more firmly forge ties with the Persian ruling class, but, as far as Hephaestion was concerned, receiving in marriage the sister of the new co-queen was yet another proof of the exceptional esteem in which he was held by Alexander, who thus called him to be part of the royal family itself. They thus became brothers-in-law, but there was more: Alexander, says Arrian, "...wanted to become the uncle of Hephaestion's children ...," and it is therefore even possible to imagine that the two hoped that their respective lineages might one day be joined, and that, eventually, the crown of Macedonia and Persia might be borne by a descendant of both.

Death

In the spring of 324 B.C. Hephaistion left Susa, where the collective wedding had taken place, and followed Alexander and the army on the next leg of the return journey, to Ecbatana, the modern Iranian city of Hamadan. They arrived in the fall, and it was then, during games and festivals, that Hephaistion fell ill. According to Arrian, after several days of fever, they had to send for Alexander, who was engaged in the games, because his friend had gotten worse, but the king did not make it in time, and by the time he reached Hephaestion's room, he was already dead. Plutarch gives more details: being a young man and a soldier (and therefore somewhat reckless), after initially feeling ill, Hephaestion ignored the instructions of the physician Glaucia who had put him on an empty stomach and, as soon as the latter left him to go to the theater, he ate some boiled chicken and drank a lot of wine on it. Lane Fox thus concludes the story, "The disobedience aggravated the illness, which was probably typhoid and caused a reaction to any sudden intake of food. When the doctor returned, he found his patient in a critical condition, and for seven more days the disease showed no signs of improvement...On the eighth day, as the crowd was watching the boys' race in the stadium, news reached the stage that Hephaistion had had a serious relapse. Alexander rushed to his bed, but, when he arrived, it was too late."

The suddenness of a young, fit man's death has often left later historians baffled. Mary Renault, for example, wrote that a "sudden crisis is difficult to explain in a young, convalescent man." The rationale that seems most plausible is that it was, as mentioned above, typhoid fever, and that solid food perforated an intestine already ulcerated by the disease, but other hypothetical explanations cannot, however, be ruled out, chief among them being that of poison.

Hephaestion's death is treated by ancient sources more extensively than the other events in his story because of the profound effects it had on Alexander. Plutarch writes that "...Alexander's grief was uncontrollable...," and adds that the king ordered many signs of mourning, and in particular that the manes and tails of the horses be cut off, that the ramparts of nearby cities be torn down, and that flutes and all other musical entertainment be banned. In addition to the story already reported in the previous paragraph about the king's immediate expressions of despair over his friend's corpse, Arrian also reports that "...until the third day after Hephaistion's death, Alexander neither tasted food nor took any care of his appearance, but lay sprawled on the ground, now moaning, now weeping silently . ..."; he further relates that he had the physician, Glaucia, executed for negligence, and razed to the ground the temple of Asclepius, the ineffective god of medicine (Alexander was most religious), and finally that he cut off his hair as a sign of mourning, an ardent reminder this of Achilles' last gift to Patroclus on the funeral pyre: "...  Since therefore now removed

Another sign that Alexander looked to Achilles for inspiration on how to express his grief can be found in the campaign he led shortly thereafter against the tribe of the Cossites. Plutarch claims that the massacre that followed was dedicated to the spirit of Hephaestion, and it is plausible to think that in Alexander's eyes this might have represented the correspondent of Achilles' sacrifice, on the pyre of Patroclus, of "...twelve lusty sons ..." of the Trojan nobility. Andrew Chugg, picking up on a suggestion by Italian art historian Linda De Santis, also noted how, in addition to the Iliad, Alexander found a second source of ideal inspiration in Euripides' Alcestis, where the widower Admetus comes to a similar situation of grief as the Macedonian ruler, and how the actions of the king of Pherea are taken up and retraced by Alexander (the cutting of the manes, the ban on musical performances, and more). The latter appears almost, according to Chugg's concluding remarks, to want to "point us to words that have come from the pen of his favorite tragedian for the purpose of speaking to us through the centuries about the depth of his feelings for his deceased friend. Somehow he is asserting that his relationship with Hephaestion was equally close as Admetus' was with Alcesti. Perhaps he is telling us that Hephaestion was the one who would have wanted to die to save him, just as Alcesti perished to preserve Admetus' life."

Arrian states that all his sources agree that "...for two whole days after Hephaistion's death Alexander touched no food and paid no attention to his bodily needs, but lay in bed, now weeping in despair, now immersed in the silence of suffering." He arranged for a period of mourning throughout the empire, and, according to Arrian's account, "many of the Aethians, in respect for Alexander, consecrated themselves and their arms to the dead ..." In the army, too, they wanted to remember Hephaistion, and his post as commander of the cavalry of the Aethyrians was left vacant, because Alexander "...wished that it should remain forever linked to Hephaistion's name, and so Hephaistion's regiment continued to be called in the same way, and Hephaistion's image continued to be raised before it." Finally, Alexander wanted that, like other fallen Ethereans, Hephaestion should also be remembered with a large stone lion sculpture, one of the many with which the Macedonians littered their path; according to Lane Fox, the so-called "lion of Hamadan," which is still proposed today as one of the city's tourist attractions, is precisely what remains (very little, to tell the truth) of the funeral monument of Alexander's much-regretted companion.

As already mentioned in the introduction, Alexander sent messengers to the oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the Libyan oasis of Siwa, that is, to the shrine he most revered and which he had also wanted to personally visit, with rather mysterious motives, at the time of his stay in Egypt. To the god whom he proclaimed as his father (and not only, perhaps, on an ideal or mythical level), Alexander asked whether it was permissible to establish a divine cult for Hephaistion, and he had the consolation of hearing the answer that it was permissible to honor him, if not as a god, at least as a hero, and "... from that day forward he saw that his friend was worshipped with the . He saw to it that altars were erected in his memory, and evidence that the cult somehow succeeded in taking root can be found in a simple votive plaque now in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, bearing the inscription, "Diogenes to the hero Hephaestion" (Διογένης Ἡφαιστίωνι ἥρωι).

Hephaestion received grandiose funeral rites in Babylon, the cost of which was variously put by sources at an enormous sum, ranging from 10,000 to 12,000 talents, which can be cautiously made to correspond, in modern terms, to something like two to three hundred million euros. Alexander himself wanted to drive the hearse part of the way back to Babylon, being replaced for another part by Hephaistion's friend (and future successor) Perdiccas. Funeral games were held in Babylon in honor of the dead man: the contests ranged from poetry to athletics and were attended by three thousand people, thus eclipsing any precedent on the subject, from the standpoint of both cost and number of participants. The design of the funeral pyre was entrusted to Stasicrates "... because-as Plutarch reports-this artist was famous for his innovations that combined an exceptional degree of magnificence, boldness, and ostentation ..."

According to the plan, the pyre was sixty meters high, was in the shape of a square two hundred meters wide, and was to be built on seven tiers in a staircase fashion. The first level was decorated with two hundred and forty golden-proned quinquerems, each furnished with two kneeling archers six feet tall, and armed warriors, even taller, divided by scarlet felt drapes. The second level featured flashlights nearly seven meters high, with serpents twisted at the base, golden garlands in the central part, and, at the top, flames topped by eagles. The third level featured a hunting scene, the fourth a battle of golden centaurs, the fifth lions and bulls, also in gold, and the sixth Macedonian and Persian weapons. Finally, the seventh and final level bore hollow sculptures of sirens, designed to house, hidden, the chorus charged with raising the funeral mournings. It is possible that the pyre was not intended to be set on fire, but was instead intended to be a permanent mausoleum, in which case, in all likelihood, it was never completed, as is evident from historical references to very expensive plans left incomplete by Alexander upon his death a few months later (and never completed).

Only one possible tribute still remained, and its significance appears definitive in its simplicity: at the funeral ceremony in Babylon, orders were given to the provinces that the Royal Fire be extinguished until the end of the celebrations. Normally this would take place only on the death of the Great King himself, but the order given should not be surprising: after all, according to the king's own words to Darius' mother years earlier, not only and not so much Alexander's "deputy and successor" had died, but, in a sense, "also" Alexander himself, who would then follow his friend personally a few months later anyway.

Sources

1. Hephaestion
2. Efestione
3. ^ il 356 è la data di nascita di Alessandro Magno, di cui Efestione doveva essere, grosso modo, coetaneo; secondo diversi studiosi (Lane Fox, op. cit., pag. 48; Reames, Copia archiviata, su myweb.unomaha.edu. URL consultato il 29 novembre 2007 (archiviato dall'url originale il 14 dicembre 2007).), peraltro, è possibile che fosse leggermente più anziano, anche se di pochissimo
4. ^ A. B. Bosworth; Elizabeth Baynham (2002). Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction. Oxford University Press. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-19-925275-6.
5. ^ a b Falk, Avner (1996). A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 211. ISBN 9780838636602. Alexander married 'Barsine' (Stateira), daughter of the dead Darius III; his best friend, Hephaestion, married her sister 'Drypetis', whose Persian name recalls Draupadi, the Indian heroine of the Mahabharata.
6. ^ a b Curtius 3.12.16
7. ^ Joseph Bidez; Albert Joseph Carnoy; Franz Valery Marie Cumont (2001). L'Antiquité classique. Imprimerie Marcel Istas. p. 165.
8. ^ Ian Worthington (10 July 2014). Alexander the Great: Man and God. Taylor & Francis. p. 126. ISBN 978-1-317-86644-2.
9. Alexander Demandt: Alexander der Große. Leben und Legende. München 2009, S. 236f.
10. Robin Lane Fox: Alexander der Große. Eroberer der Welt. Stuttgart 2004, S. 61.
11. Elizabeth D. Carney: Woman in Alexander’s Court. In: Joseph Roisman (Hrsg.): Brill’s Companion to Alexander the Great. Leiden, Boston 2003, S. 243.
12. Zusammenfassend Pedro Barcelo: Alexander der Große (Gestalten der Antike, herausgegeben von Manfred Clauss). Darmstadt 2007, S. 50.
13. Diogène Laërce, V, 27.
14. Quinte-Curce, IV, 1, 16.
15. Diodore, XVII, 61, 3.