Essay on Hephaestion

[kizzikat]

I don’t know if anyone will be interested but I’ve written a very long, and doubtless boring, essay on Alexander & Hephaestion’s early years.

1.                  Age(1) http://kizzikat.livejournal.com/15767.html#cutid1

2.                  Mieza http://kizzikat.livejournal.com/16317.html#cutid1

3.                  The Pages http://kizzikat.

Comments

[alexcat]

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your essays. There was certainly some food for thought and further research there. Well done! I know you cite your sources as you go but it would be nice to have them as a listing too. That is NOT a criticism. I am inherently lazy!

Bravo! Made me want to delve back into my histories and write about Alexander again!

[kizzikat]

Thank you! I did think about footnotes, but thought it might make it seem to be pretending to be academic (which it isn't!). I can certainly provide a list of the books I used.

I remember reading some of your stories a long time ago - so please, please do write some more!

[kizzikat]

Book list as requested

[hyukie_light]

Hi, would you like to tell me where I can get "Hephaistion Amyntoros: Eminence Grise at the court of Alexander the Great - Jeanne Reames-Zimmerman - 1998"? I searched it long time and I can't find it anywhere.
Thank you very much :)
Rain

Thank you!

[valoa]

You are a germ:)

Re: Thank you!

[kizzikat]

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Quintus Curtius Rufus

[apollinaris]

"The only reference we have for Hephaestion’s age, apart from Arrian calling him a young man at his death, is from Curtius..." which exemplifies the problem of learning about the life of Alexander (including, of course, Hephaestion).

This Rufus is writing ca 60 CE. We do not have his sources. These two facts alone make him unreliable.

But more than that, Rufus is part of a wider context of politics and philosophy for the period and in that, I don't see him as a historian. In short, this is part of the mythology and faith of those times, not history.

[proskynesis]

By that token, is there ever such a thing as history?

[apollinaris]

The nature of history is another discussion, I think. If you wish me to define my terms, then I mean history as the study of the human past (rather than cultural heritage).

[proskynesis]

But all writers are influenced by 'the wider context of politics and philosophy for the period'. That is the purpose of source criticism: to analyse the texts within those contexts and to try to understand why they are saying what they are saying - obviously, a massively imprecise science. But to throw it all out as fundamentally 'unreliable' is pointlessly reductive, imo.

[iridania]

Thank you! Bookmarked for a later read ♥

[kizzikat]

Hope you enjoy it!