Hephaestion Amyntoros
6. ERASTES/EROMENOS (1)
Thirdly, there is the knotty problem of the erastes/eromenos model. This model of the older man/boy taking a younger boy under his wing and educating him sexually, morally, socially and militarily essentially belongs to the city state as typified by Classical Athens, which reached its apogee in the 5th century BC. The Sacred Band of Thebes, the 150 pairs of lovers which Philip would have known during his teenage years as a hostage in Thebes, was inspired by Plato’s ‘Symposium’, but it only lasted 40 years and by the time it was destroyed by Alexander’s charge at Chaeronea, it was already something of a romantic anachronism, a gentlemanly elite in the face of Philip’s professional phalanx. The model of the military lovers, however, is applied to the second half of the 4th century Macedon when there is some doubt as to whether it was relevant.
We know, for example, that the Macedonians at Philip’s court had homosexual relationships when both men had beards (Theopompus). The Greeks thought it demeaning for a man to take the passive role after he had grown a beard, but this doesn’t seem to have bothered the Macedonians.
Classical Greece was a very different society from Macedon, which was a much more rural and archaic society, generally thought to be more akin to Homeric Greece than city states such Athens or Thebes, who thought the Macedonians uncultivated. The culture of Classical Greece was based on the city and their economies on trade and rivalry, which were necessarily backed by competitive military forces, but Macedon’s economy was based on agriculture and the export of timber, and in recent history their military force would have been based more on defence than aggression.
Nicholas Hammond says “the men of the Macedonian city were all free men and worked on the land, whereas the those of a city-state included a large slave element and the citizens were mainly rentiers, traders and craftsmen. The gap between the richest citizen and the poorest citizen in a Macedonian city was far narrower than in a city-state. Thus in many respects the Macedonian state had greater internal stability and more vigour than the average fourth-century city-state.”
Archelaus, who was king 50 years before Alexander was born, did much to strengthen Macedon and imported many artists, painters, poets, architects, scultptors and musicians to civilise the country, including the tragic playwright Euripides, who wrote The Bacchae at Pella. He was allegedly killed however by a pack of wild dogs kept by a Lyncestian nobleman, which sounds a bit like life imitating art.
If Hephaestion’s family did originate from Greece, this might have been the time at which they arrived in Macedon (JRZ). There is no reason to suppose that Archelaus did not also hire foreign soldiers to train and strengthen his army who might well have settled in the new capital of Pella. Yet this does not necessarily mean that such cultural importations were more than a surface veneer on Macedonian culture.
There may also have been economic reasons behind the fashion of the erastes/eromenos model in Classical Greece which might not have applied to Macedon. Greece was over-populated in this era and had limited land resources, hence the founding of colonies and the large mercenary armies throughout the Mediterranean. Many younger sons may not have been able to afford to marry and support a family until they had made their own fortune, but bonding with an older man would have helped to tie their loyalties to the city state and its defence, as well as directing and containing their youthful sexual energy. Macedon, with a far more rural economy and arguably better land, and, under Philip and his father Amyntas, an expanding economy, may not have felt these same pressures to bond young men with their city, their peers and to contain adolescent sexual energy. Amyntas and Philip would in fact have wanted to harness this energy for their expansionist policy. Consequently, Alexander and Hephaestion’s relationship may been more about personal preference than peer pressure to conform to an existing pattern.
An aside that may be worth noting here is that Waldemar Heckel’s The Marshals of Alexander’s Empire is full of groups of two, three, even four brothers, fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, for example, Ptolemy and his brother Menelaus, Peucestas and his brother Amyntas, Perdiccas and his brother Alketas, Craterus and his brother Amphoteros, Marsyas the half-brother of Antigonus who probably studied at Mieza as he wrote a pamphlet on the Education of Alexander. Yet we know of no male (or female) relatives of Hephaestion, other than a possible much younger brother, Amyntor Amyntoros, mentioned by JRZ, and a very tentative cousin, Demetrios son of Althaimenes, son of Demetrios (Hephaestion’s putative grandfather) (Heckel).
This absence of relatives must have made Hephaestion rather isolated and dependent upon Alexander’s friendship, and even more dependent upon Alexander’s patronage for advancement in his career. He might well have had to prove himself more competent to do a job than someone else’s brother or son who would naturally been the preferred candidate if their kinsman had the disposing of the job. Yet his dependence upon Alexander may have been part of his attraction for Alexander: as John Maxwell O’Brien points out, Alexander appears to have preferred relationships in which he was the controlling partner eg Hephaestion and Bagoas.
However, one of the main reasons for applying the erastes/eromenos model to Alexander and Hephaestion’s relationship is the episode at Troy where Alexander honoured Achilles’ tomb and Hephaestion honoured the tomb of Patroclus. By Classical times, it was assumed that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers - although Homer does not say so - and though now we tend to assume that Patroclus was the elder, the erastes of the pair, there was no consensus of opinion in Classical times. The playwright Aeschylus portrayed Patroclus as the young beloved in The Myrmidons (which Mary Renault has Alexander and Hephaestion watching in Fire From Heaven), but Plato believed that Aeschylus was mistaken and that Achilles was the eromenos. The modern reason for portraying Patroclus as the erastes is because Achilles is seen as the original angry young man who lived hard and died young to achieve immortal fame, and because again, modern writers have tended to insist on applying the erastes/eromenos model to a situation where it may not have been relevant. Thus it would appear to modern eyes that Alexander and Hephaestion at Troy were identifying themselves with this preconceived notion of the archaic lovers.
This assumption, together with the assumptions about the Pages, has thus led to the identification of Hephaestion as the older erastes of the pair. However, this might not be the case as Alexander would have been obliged to honour Achilles at Troy, not only as his ancestor, but as the more famous of the pair, the princely warrior whom Alexander wished to emulate. It would have been inappropriate for Alexander to honour Patroclus and Hephaestion Achilles as this would have appeared a strange message, to our eyes at least, for a young king mounting an invasion to be broadcasting - that he was subservient to someone else - when what he may have been doing was honouring the one of the pair who was the more famous warrior.
Yet in permitting Hephaestion to honour Patroclus publicly at the same time as he honoured Achilles, Alexander was making an enormous public statement of his love, devotion and trust in Hephaestion. He was making a typically grand statement that their friendship was as solid as the legendry one between Achilles and Patroclus, they were prepared to die in defence of each other’s honour, and their friendship would live beyond their deaths.
In accepting this assumption that Hephaestion is the older erastes of the pair, there is also an implicit assumption that Alexander could not have achieved what he did, that he was too young to have conquered the world, without the support of an older, more mature man. This, in my opinion, says more about the disappointed hopes of someone who accepts such an unquestioned assumption and who has forgotten the dynamism of youth, than it does about Alexander’s character.
Part of the reason for the popularity of the view that Hephaestion was the erastes of the pair is Mary Renault’s portrayal of Hephaestion’s character in her hugely influential novels Fire From Heaven and The Persian Boy. She portrays Hephaestion as Alexander’s emotional bedrock, his solace from an emotionally demanding mother and a difficult relationship with a distant father. Mary Renault, with her medical background, was offering a psychological explanation for homosexuality, further compounded by a traumatic, sexually-laden episode between his parents which the child Alexander witnessed. This is a formula which Mary Renault repeats in several of her novels, most notably The Charioteer, but it is a formula which is not necessary in a society which embraced and encouraged homosexual relationships and accepted them as normal. Alexander spent the majority of his adult life on campaign so we should not be surprised (JRZ) that his strongest emotional attachment was to someone who shared the strains and triumphs of this way of life, and who probably had done so for most of his formative years.
A further reason for assuming that Hephaestion was the erastes in their relationship is Theophratsus’ story that Philip and Olympias feared that Alexander was a womanish man (gynnis) and tried unsuccessfully to force the courtesan Callixiena onto him. As Nicholas Hammond says, what young man, especially one as proud as Alexander, wouldn’t have been hugely embarrassed by this and refused.
The episode must have happened before Alexander turned 18, for in August 338 BC he was at Chaeronea and Philip, and probably Alexander, spent the following winter in Greece. When Philip returned to Macedon the following spring, he and Olympias can have hardly been on speaking terms because of his planned marriage to Attalus’s niece Cleopatra, which was followed by Olympias’s departure for Epirus and Alexander’s sojourn in Illyria.
Andrew Chugg says that Theophrastus was known to be hostile to both Alexander and Olympias, so his tale may be an invention, but the obvious reason why Alexander may not have been interested in girls at this age is an intense relationship with Hephaestion, but this does really point to either a passive or an active role in their relationship.
A possible reason why Alexander may have appeared feminine is the late onset of puberty. This medical condition is known to be associated with persons of small stature, which we know Alexander was. We also know that he had a high pitched voice, and that Philip embarrassed his son by saying he sang like a girl. Theophrastus also says that Alexander was not well-disposed towards sexual love. If he was a late developer he may have been reluctant to appear to be competing with physically more mature boys and so have avoided sexual situations. If he was a late developer, he might also have found the company of a slightly younger boy more congenial and when he did mature, he might have felt the need to prove himself as an erastes rather than as an eromenos.
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