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| User: | lion_of_macedon (7895466) Fire From Heaven
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| Name: | Alexander | |
| Birthdate: | 1971-04-05 | |
| Bio: |   Alexander the Great commanded his first battles while only sixteen years old, and went on to conquer the entire known world, leading his troops from the mountains of northern Greece all the way to the borderlands of India, subduing every opponent in his path, from the Greek city states to the kingdoms of North Africa, Asia Minor and Persia. His ruthlessness in battle, often tempered by his magnanimity to the vanquished, was legendary, but so was his devotion to his friends and companions, and the love which he shared almost exclusively with his male peers from earliest childhood on. This was no chance event. Born in August of 356 BCE, under the sign of the lion, he was the quintessential product of a patriarchal warrior culture, the very paragon of a male dominated world ruled by masculine values and a masculine aesthetic. His tutor from the age of thirteen on was the philosopher Aristotle, who documented the excesses as well as the values of pederasty. Alexander was to embody those values for the rest of his brief but volcanic life, and even to stretch the accepted boundaries of ancient male love by living out his great romance with a man his own age, his childhood friend Hephaestion. What may seem normal to us today, the love of one man for another, in ancient days was frowned upon as a threat to the structure of society, one in which adult men were expected to pair off with teenage boys in order to educate them and lead them into adulthood, held close by the power of erotic love. But in Alexander's world of palaces, power and passion, the pedagogic model was more honored in the breach than the observance. Yet boys remained the focus of men's affection and Philip II himself, Alexander's own father, pursued young lovers tirelessly all his life. His very death came at the hand of a vengeful former lover, Pausanias, who had been spurned by the king for a prettier boy. Unlike Philip's affairs, the love between Alexander and Hephaestion never waned. There is a tradition that Alexander saw their love as an emulation of that heroic love between Achilles and Patroclus, with Alexander embodying Achilles and Hephaestion, Patroclus. Crossing over from Europe into Asia on their way to Persia, the two halted their campaign in Illium by the ruins of Troy. There Alexander sacrificed and offered garlands at the shrine of Achilles, while Hephaestion did the same at that of Patroclus. Following the ancient custom, Alexander ran naked around the hero's tomb, declaring his admiration for Achilles, "fortunate in life to have so faithful a friend, and in death to have so famous a poet." Male love did not blind the Greeks, nor Alexander, to the lure of beautiful women: he married Roxane, a Persian princess, daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria, and fathered a child with her. Later, as the Roman/Greek historian Arrian reports, Alexander, while in Persia, at Susa “…held wedding ceremonies for his Companions; he also took [another] wife himself — Barsine, Darius’ eldest daughter, and, according to Aristobulus, another as well, namely Parysatis, the youngest daughter of Ochlus…”[VII.5] His love of women, however, may have been an acquired taste. The Roman historian Curtius reports that "He scorned [feminine] sensual pleasures to such an extent that Olympias, his mother, was anxious lest he be unable to beget offspring." To whet his appetite for the fair sex, King Philip and Olympias had Kallixeina, a Thessalian hetaira (a professional courtesan) brought in. And one of his contemporary biographers, Eumenes, claimed Alexander "was not at his ease with sex." Another great love of Alexander’s life was the eunuch Bagoas. The two met while Alexander was on campaign against king Darius of the Persians. The war had raged for some time, with Darius finally on the run and deserted by his vassals, finally to be assassinated by one of his own men. His general, Nabarzenes, went to swear fealty to Alexander, and to offer rich gifts, among which the beautiful boy. Curtius describes him as, "... Bagoas, a eunuch exceptional in beauty and in the very flower of boyhood, with whom Darius was intimate and with whom Alexander would later be intimate," [VI.5.23] The stormy, outspoken character of the boy matched his stunning looks, and the friendship which grew between him and the warrior king was to last the rest of their lives. Alexander saw to it that his darling was well provided. As Eumenes recounts, the king installed Bagoas in a villa outside of Babylon and required all his officers and courtesans, both Greek and Persian, to render him honors (i.e. to present him with rich gifts). They all did but one, the faithful satrap Orsines, who claimed that he had come "to honor the friends of Alexander, not his whores," and that "it was not the custom of the Persians to take males in marriage who had been turned into women for the sake of being fucked." Enraged, the young Bagoas wrought Orsines' destruction by means of endless calumnies, rousing Alexander's mind to anger until he condemned the man. Still not satisfied with his handiwork, Bagoas struck Orsines as he was being led off to execution, who turned and said "I had heard that women once reigned in Asia; this however is something new, for a eunuch to reign!" [Curtius, X.1.22] Alexander’s favor to Bagoas is also apparent in his subsequent appointment of Bagoas as one of the trierarchs, men of substance who oversaw and funded the construction of the navy for the journey homeward. Their affair is attested to by many historians of the time, among whom Plutarch, who recounts an episode suggesting that the love between the two was common knowledge among the troops. As Plutarch would have it, after a dancing contest in which Bagoas had won the honors, he went to sit by the side of the king. “which so pleased the Macedonians that they shouted out for him to kiss Bagoas, and never stopped clapping their hands and shouting till Alexander took him in his arms and kissed him warmly.”[Plutarch, The Lives] This new love in no way affected the deep devotion which bound him to Hephaestion, which was itself famous throughout Magna Graecia. The cynic philosopher Diogenes himself, wrote to Alexander about it: "If you want to be kalos kagathos [beautiful and good], throw away the rag you have on your head and come to us. But you won't be able to, for you are ruled by Hephaestion's thighs." [Diogenes of Sinope, Letters, 24] Their love was undone only by the Hephaestion’s death during the summer festivities at Ecbatana, in Persia, on their way home from India. Alexander, who till then had borne without breaking stride hardship and wounds that would have felled a lesser man, was undone by this loss. It is said that he lay upon Hephaestion’s body for a day and a night, and finally had to be dragged off by his friends. For another three days he remained mute, in tears, fasting. When he rose it was to shear off all his hair, and to order to have all the ornaments in the city taken off the walls and the manes and tails of all the horses sheared as well. Finally he forbade all music in the city, and ordered every town in the empire to carry out mourning rituals. Later he was to send envoys to Ammon’s oracle at the oasis of Siwah in Egypt to ask for divine honors to be granted to his dead friend. The body of Hephaestion was embalmed and carried on to Babylon to be burned on a funeral pyre in a funeral on which he planned to spend astronomical sums. Little did Alexander know that Babylon was to become his final stop as well. Forced to stay in the town through the hot, mosquito-ridden summer months he took sick and died after a short illness. By our accounting the year was 323 bce. Alexander was 33 years old. Alexander profile from: http://www.androphile.org/preview/Library/Biographies/Alexander/Alexander.htm | |
| Memories:: | 8 entries | |
| Interests: | 109: achilles, alexander, alexander the great, alexander/bagoas, alexander/bagoas/cassander, alexander/cassander, alexander/hephaestion, alexander/hephaestion/cassander, alexandria, angelina jolie, anthony hopkins, aristotle, arrian, asia, asia minor, athens, babylon, bagoas, bessus, bisexuality, bones, books, bucephalas, cassander, cavalry, chaeronea, chariots, classical, classical art, classical civilizations, cleitus, cleopatra, colin farrell, connor paolo, conqueror, cyprus, cyrus the great, darius iii, dark angel, delphi, demosthenes, destiny, doctor who, dr who, echelon, egypt, euripides, gaugamela, general, gods, gordian knot, granicus, greece, greeks, hellenism, hephaestion, hermolaus, history of alexander, homosexuality, hoplites, hydaspes, india, infantry, jared leto, jericho, legend, leonidas, loyalty, macedonia, macedonian history, macedonian music, macedonian mythology, makran, mary renault, military, morocco, mythological art, mythology, olympias, pan-hellenic, parmenion, perdiccas, persepolis, persia, persians, phalanx, phillip ii, philotas, plato, plutarch, prison break, prophecy, ptolemy, reign the conqueror, roxanne, sg1, slash, socrates, sparta, stargate, stargate atlantis, supernatural, susa, syria, the nature of alexander, thrace, vassal, veronica mars, war | |
| Schools: | None listed | |
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| Account type: | Basic Account | |
