Hi Fiona,Fiona wrote:That's cool, Phoebus - can I just ask, though, how large a part does Alexander's reaction to Hephaistion's death play in making you think their relationship transcended ordinary friendship? I mean, if we had no details at all about this, would you still think that on the remaining evidence? I can see how it could - the scene with Sisygambis is enough on its own, really, along with Curtius' accompanying comments - I'm just interested in what forms people's impressions of Hephaistion and of the quality of his friendship with Alexander.
That's a good question. If I had no details of Hephaestion's death and the emotions this brought out in Alexander, the scene with Dareius' family following Issus would indeed be a defining one. But not only that... consider, if you will, what even the sparse text offered for Alexander's marriage to Stateira means: the fact that he vocally wished his children to be cousins to Hephaestion's own shows that the two were not just great friends; Alexander wanted their children to have the same relationship they would have had just as if their fathers had been brothers in blood as well as in sentiment. No one else that he called Friend--genuinely or not--did he ever reward so wholeheartedly.
To me, that stands right up there with Alexander's grief.
A spouse, or a sibling, I would imagine. And I would go so far as to say that most siblings probably never develop the relationship of absolute trust and friendship Alexander and Hephaestion had. I would also posit that, had Alexander and Hephaestion not built their friendship over so many countless challenges and trials, from one end of the world to the next, that their relationship would not have been nearly as meaningful. Had Alexander not been the king of Macedon, or a king at all, his and Hephaestion's friendship would not have been what it was.The loss of someone he could truly trust that much must have been devastating, and I wouldn't minimise it - but it's the clinging to the body, and refusing to leave go that make me that we are talking about more than a friend here, but a spouse. If it wasn't that, then the charges of instability start to gain currency, I think.
What's sad in my eyes is that most of his lieutenants were incapable of replicating even a shadow of that that sort of friendship with one another either before or after Alexander's death.Yes, it's over the top, but that's just Alexander ...
Fiona
Any one of them would have deserved over the top celebrations and funerals following their passing (judging by the standard of what was to come, as Paralus pointed out in a very informative series of posts a few weeks ago), but the best they managed for one another once the fighting started was Antigonus' weak display of sorrow as his "friend" Eumenes was first starved and then executed under his captivity (with the fast kill coming only after his army demonstrated their feelings on the matter).