The Netflix docuseries
Alexander the Great: The Making of a God
begins with toe caps.
From the outset he dives headfirst into a topic that still drives historians crazy:
the sexuality of the king of Macedonia
.
Eight minutes into the first episode, “The Young King,” Alexander fights with his friend
Hephaestion
and, immediately afterwards, goes to bathe with him.
There they hug and kiss like good lovers.
The sequence that
generated
so much commotion on networks (
in
Jones
, Cardiff University, Wales.
“Alexander grew up with two close companions, and one of them,
Hephaestion, was not only a good companion, but perhaps his great love
.
Same-sex relationships were the norm throughout the Greek world,” Ikram says.
And Llewellyn-Jones joins her: “The Greeks didn't have a word for homosexuality or being gay.
It wasn't in his vocabulary.
“It was just being sexual.”
Alexander and Hephaestion in the platform series.
Alexander the Great and Hephaestion
The King's sexual preferences are difficult to follow because there are no sources that 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 certain, many agree - although none affirms it - that Alexander's greatest love was Hephaestion, commander of the cavalry of his army, son of a Macedonian nobleman and, furthermore,
his lifelong friend
.
As good children of the Macedonian aristocracy, Hephaestion and Alexander would have studied together under the tutelage of
Aristotle
, a philosopher who considered relationships based solely on carnal pleasure to be shameful.
Hephaestion's face drawn from a sculpture.
That is why it is said that Alexander did not accept being offered beautiful young men to buy and that he treated his lovers with kindness.
British historian
Paul Cartledge
says that “almost certainly” the relationship between the two went beyond friendship, since Greek-Macedonian customs favored an active sexual life.
His colleague,
Robin Lane Fox
, agrees: "In his youth Hephaestion was his great friend and surely the sexual element had developed by then."
When Hephaestion died, Alexander felt so bad that he fasted for several days.
He prepared a massive funeral for him in Babylon and asked to be recognized as a god.
Alexander died shortly after Hephaestion and there are those who claim that his death occurred, in part, because he neglected his health after losing his friend.
On the left, a representation of Alexander;
on the right, Hephaestion.
Alexander the Great and Bagoas
Another of Alexander's lovers would have been the courtier
Bagoas
.
With him, a eunuch and exceptional beauty, she would have had a purely sexual bond.
Fox noted that there is direct and indirect evidence of their relationship of “
pure physical desire
.”
Mary Renault
, author of a book on Alexander and the Courtier, said that “for the race-conscious Macedonians, Bagoas was a modest eccentricity of Alexander's and the less said about it the better (...) it is not strange that , at least once, Alejandro's sexual demands were satisfied."
Let us remember that these statements are based, as we had anticipated, on the concept of homosexuality as it is understood today at that time.
Alexander the Great lived from 356 BC to 323 BC
Alexander, however, was a transgressor in the years 300 BC for not loving young men, but quite the opposite: for having maintained a long-term relationship with a man his age.
Alexander's women
Although this article is focused on the two alleged lovers of the military man, Alejandro had more female lovers than male ones.
And he was married three times
.
His wives were
Roxana of Bactria
,
Barsine-Estatira
and
Parysatis
.
With the first he had a son,
Alexander IV of Macedonia
, born after her death.
Video
It is a documentary series about the life of the king of Macedonia.
It is said that Alejandro could have had another son as a result of an affair with an alleged concubine, but this version is more disputed.