Nysa

Alexandria

by Darío Mekler

Founded in 331 BC by Alexander the great. One of the many Alexandrias founded by Alexander, the most illustrious of them all.

Became the most important port and cultural center of the hellenistic world. Capital of ptollemaic Egypt.

The lighthouse in its small island, both guide and watchtower.

The library, the biggest in the old world, home to philosophers and scientists. Latter burned to the ground.

Center of drama of some of the latter roman republic soap operas: Pompeius, Julius Caesar, Octavian, Marc Anthony, Cleopatra.

I think the problem @moonlady101 described in the post linked below is due to the same reason authors of historical fiction nowadays feel the need to sanitise their work and apply modern morality and social dynamics in order to make it acceptable for the public and avoid being “cancelled.”

(This is coming from someone who loves ancient history, especially the time of Alexander’s conquests and the Diadochi wars, and has a WiP based on it.)

There are two main concerns for authors and media creators today:

1. Fear of being accused of romanticising or condoning "problematic" historical figures or tropes (e.g. conquest, sexism, slavery, dictatorship, etc.).

Disclaimer: Sensitivity readers are absolutely necessary in the industry, especially when it comes to representing marginalised groups.

That said, we’ve reached a point where we often have to distort historical reality in order to make it palatable and less offensive to modern audiences. There's increasing pressure to sanitise the past and soften portrayals of historical figures, even when such portrayals are unfaithful to their time periods (unfortunately, authors often face harassment for depicting these realities as they were.)

Take Alexander, for example. We don’t have any evidence from sources linking him personally to sexual violence, he’s actually shown to be quite delicate with the women he encounters, but it’s almost certain that his army committed such atrocities during the campaign.

And let’s be honest: would he have cared about the rape of Timoclea if she hadn’t been a noblewoman? Would he have shown such respect toward Darius’s family if he didn’t need them for his PR campaign and to legitimise his rule over Persia? Was Roxana truly so beautiful that he fell in love at first sight, or was she just politically important for pacifying eastern Persian tribes?

We also know that Barsine, the wife of the Greek mercenary Memnon who served in Darius’s army, became Alexander’s concubine and bore him a son, Heracles. Looking at the timeline, between the Battle of Issus, when Darius’s wife Stateira I was taken hostage, and her death in childbirth, it’s also possible the child was Alexander’s. Did he force them to sleep with him? I don’t think so. But the truth is, they would have felt obligated to do so, regardless of their feelings, in order to maintain their status and ensure their protection.

What’s frustrating is that the same people who demand male historical figures be whitewashed to justify their interest in them, often have no problem with historical women being demonised or misrepresented.

Just look at the constant mistreatment of Olympias, she's often portrayed as an obsessive, jealous, and nasty witch of a wife to Philip II. Or Cleopatra, who can’t be shown for what she really was: an ambitious, ruthless, and brilliant politician who used her sexuality to gain power and protect her kingdom in a world ruled by men and military strength. Now she has to be a fighter in a literal sense, and the morally questionable things she did to stay in power (like murdering her younger brother) are reinterpreted as accidents, never her fault. Because God forbid a woman ruler uses the same methods to cement power as the men in her dynasty had done for generations.

2. In today’s era, where all media has to be exciting, there's also a push to "spice things up" for a broader audience.

Let’s break down a few things here:

Alexander and Hephaestion in an open homosexual relationship:

They might have continued a romantic relationship into adulthood, but it would not have been open, because that simply wasn’t socially acceptable. In ancient Greece, homosexual relationships usually involved an older man (erastes - ἐραστής) and a younger one (eromenos - ἐρώμενος), with a mentor-student dynamic. Or they occurred between two boys. Once the younger man reached adulthood, the relationship typically shifted to something more platonic. In their case, Alexander was a king (so automatically of a higher status), and even if Hephaestion was younger than him (which I don't think he was), an open, public relationship when they both became adult men would have been extremely humiliating and emasculating for Hephaestion.

Polyamory:

Could it have happened? I think it could. Famously, Ptolemy’s concubine, Thaïs, an Athenian hetaira whom he later married, is sometimes mentioned as also having had a sexual relationship with Alexander. But she was a courtesan (hetaira - ἑταίρα), possibly a concubine (pallakē - παλλακή). That kind of arrangement would NEVER have happened with "proper women" like wives, Roxana, Stateira II, and so on.

Alexander’s relationship with Bagoas:

For an ancient Greek man, Bagoas might have represented the ultimate humiliation - loss of masculinity, so it's rather unlikely that he would have been seen as “sexually desirable” in the Greek context. But besides that, Bagoas would undoubtedly be useful to Alexander. He would have been knowledgeable about Persian court customs (serving under Darius III) and could have been a talented performer (some sources mention his famous dance at one of the banquets), which would not be uncommon for male artisans like music players or actors to perform on such occasions.

In short, we do a disservice to both history and literature when we flatten complex figures into modern archetypes just to make them more digestible. The past was brutal, morally alien, and often uncomfortable by today’s standards, and that’s exactly why it’s worth exploring honestly. Showing the darkness of history does not equate to endorsing it, portraying real, flawed people does not equate to glorifying them. And powerful historical women don’t need to be morally whitewashed or "yasified" to be palatable or admirable. If we can’t engage with history on its own terms, then what exactly are we learning from it?

Like, it is a poem dammit! The words are not supposed to be plain!

I haven't seen anyone complaining about the average fanfiction describing eyes as "shiny" (last time I checked eyes don't shine, they just glisten under the light hitting them) or hair as "silky" (yeah hair is not made out of silk we know that right?) or that someone's face "darkens" and so on and so forth

Alexander was a great (though not peerless) battlefield commander, and notably skilled at most other tasks a general had to accomplish, Gedrosia aside. But his statecraft left much to be desired. His policy for handling newly-conquered territory was to claim a relevant title, enforce some arbitrary measures on local communities or bureaucracies to suit his immediate names, and pick one of his Companions to run the place once he left.

His choice of Companions to trust with this and other important tasks left much to be desired. Alexander promoted men based on personal familiarity, with most of the high positions going to childhood friends. I'd say he prioritized loyalty over competence, if it wasn't for cases like Harpalus. He promoted some men who were competent or loyal, but not consistently.

The one reform Alexander attempted (a fusion of the Macedonian and Iranian/Persian aristocracy) was a massive failure. He alienated the Iranians by treating them worse than Macedonians, while adopting certain Persian customs that alienated his existing Macedonian and Greek allies. The Macedonians thought Alexander wanted to be a Persian-style absolute monarchy, while the Iranians thought he wanted to make them subordinate to the Macedonians. Regardless of how accurate those fears were, they made an already tricky task impossible, in ways which should have been obvious even at the time. This bodes poorly for Alexander's ability to do anything novel.

...luckily, his father was Phillip II. Phillip had established probably the most effective army in the 4th-century Mediterranean, implementing a series of reforms ranging from equipment to recruiting to motivation. Phillip II even planned and prepared Macedonia's initial invasion of Anatolia before dying, though he probably didn't expect to conquer all of Persia.

Phillip also identified and promoted many competent, loyal officers who served him and his son their entire lives, balancing out the treacherous and mediocre officers Alexander often picked. Many of Phillip's men were getting old by the time Alexander became basileus, but they were great assets until they died. ...often at Alexander's hand.

Alexander is uncommonly good at using the army he inherited, but he only got a chance to lead this army because his father was such a good basileus. There is less than zero reason to think Alexander could have constructed a great army from a mediocre kingdom.

One quirk of the Macedonian army is that it expected to get paid. Many premodern armies served their lord for honor, field rations, and a share of the loot after the army successfully sacked a palace or wealthy town. But the Macedonian army expected to be paid, specifically in silver coins.

If Alexander couldn't regularly loot silver, his army would be grumpy about disruptions in their pay, which could cause problems. Luckily, Persia had a robust network of taxes and tributaries filling his treasury with silver.

Of course, it would be hard to actually get the Persian treasury if he had to stop and siege every town he passed, then leave a garrison to keep it from immediately flipping back to Darius. Extended sieges would also wreak havoc with Alexander's logistics—feeding an army as it marches (on foot) across several thousand kilometers of hostile territory is no mean feat!

Luckily, the towns of Persia were used to imperial submission and not terribly loyal; once Alexander established himself as a greater threat than Darius, most town leaders were happy to submit and avoid retaliation, letting Alexander move on to the next town after taking enough food and silver to manage for a while.

Which wouldn't matter much if Alexander tripped and broke his army. We don't know what would happen if Alexander specifically lost a battle, but judging by later Hellenistic armies (which were basically upgraded copies of Phillip II's army), losing much of the army's Macedonian-aristocrat core likely would have devastated Macedonia's military capabilities for a generation.

The more battles Alexander fought, the more chances he had for something to go wrong. Luckily, the armies he fought were both worse at victory and not much better at handling loss. Alexander only had to fight a handful of major battles to conquer Persia.

Alexander's talent for command was exceptional, but not absolute. If he faced a competent opponent more than once, they stood a good chance of capitalizing on Alexander's strategic weaknesses or forcing him to fight on unfavorable terrain or something. Even Alexander's once-in-a-generation talent can be overcome with a combination of skill, strategy, and luck.

Speaking of luck, Alexander's primary opponent was Darius III. And unless surviving historical texts orchestrated some kind of coordinated character assassination, Darius was not a particularly good general. In particular, he had a habit of fleeing the battlefield once the battle started going poorly, which predictably ruined his army's morale.

If you've been paying attention, you'll note that many of Alexander's strengths are short-lived, things that would be true for a few campaigns but become lost or irrelevant over time. And most of his weaknesses are long-term, flaws which would grow more and more severe as his reign wore on.

Luckily, Alexander died young. After barely more than a dozen years of conquest and misrule, Alexander died, leaving his empire "to the strongest," so that the consequences of ruling an impractically large empire could fall on someone else's legacy.

If Alexander had died any later, he would probably be remembered as a solid general but incompetent kind whose empire collapsed into civil war almost immediately. Even before Alexander's death, his attempts to recall Antipater seemed ready to erupt into civil war once wither Antipater or Alexander was ready.