#curtius

“I’m Just Reading the Sources Themselves!”

This is by no means a bad impulse. I frequently encourage people to read the original sources for themselves. After all, that’s exactly what historians do when we write history. We can’t say anything without those sources! (“We are prisoners of our evidence.”)

I’m not clear on the context of the original statement, but it sounds as if the asker felt the one who said it had implied that no additional information is necessary. It’s right there, translated, in plain English. Anybody who can read can read it for themselves.

Yes, of course. But does that person understand what they’ve read? I’m not being snarky. A couple thousand years separate not just Alexander from us, but most of the Alexander historians. Alas, I hear similar expressions from some who read the Bible. They don’t need no stinkin’ commentaries or books on Bible history. “God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”

But with Alexander, unless one reads Greek and Latin, it's a translation, which is, itself, an interpretation. That’s not silly hair-splitting.

So let’s start there.

Ancient Greek is far from exact one-to-one into English. It’s dense and it’s … complicated. Some words have connotations that change the meaning, depending on context, and Greek has “helper” words (like “ge,” an intensifier) that we don’t normally translate directly but may affect translations. Plus the Greek verb is notorious for its variations … all of which add shades of meaning. Consider the optative tense when English has only a subjunctive that we don’t use that much, and it’s possible to translate the optative in a couple different ways…which changes the meaning.* Latin is a little easier I think, but it's still not one-to-one.

And if you want to learn Greek and/or Latin so you can read these in the original? You go! I did the same thing. I even thought I could teach myself from textbooks. Um, that didn't turn out so well. LOL Greek really is hard. I mean, it's hard. But I absolutely love it! It's a beautiful language, so I encourage anyone who can--take some classes!

Translation aside, there’s also the matter of the very writing itself. Ancient Greek had no lower-case, or (much) punctuation. So, when is a friend, a Friend? Or when is krateros (mighty), Krateros (a person)? It could make a HUGE difference. (And I wrote about that very problem in a soon-to-be-released article. EDITED TO ADD: I forgot about this specific YouTube video where I discuss this question slightly off-center that may be of interest.)

Let’s not stop there. Even if one has a reliable translation, to really understand it, one must also know WHO wrote it, WHEN it was written, WHERE it was written, and HOW it fits into the other literature of that era. Do you recognize the tropes, the puns, or the subtle allusions to That Famous Bit of Literature? Imagine someone with zero awareness of Shakespeare making any sense of someone’s quip, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Especially if the person protesting isn’t even female.

These matters affect everything from possible slang and how the meaning of a word changes over time, to popular themes and motifs to be aware of (and maybe watch out for).** That includes assumptions. So, when Curtius implies that Alexander favored Eastern ways, that wasn’t a good thing, but how bad it was might depend on when Curtius was writing … and that’s up for debate. He’s popularly placed in the Augustan period (middle/late first century) … but could be as late as the early second century. I’ve read sound arguments for both, but in order to make those arguments, one has to know more than just the text of Curtius.

What does it matter? Well, arguably, a lot. Especially if its author lived in the last years of the Roman Republic/very early empire when Augustus used (Eastern/Egyptian/Alexandrian) Cleopatra as a boogy (wo)man in Rome. After all, consider the anti-Muslim sentiment in the US after 9/11.

ALL this is why I made a whole series of videos on YouTube just about the Alexander sources.

Details about the source and its author determine how we should read the text.

So yes! Please DO read Arrian and Cutius and Plutarch and Diodoros (and even Justin). But then read a little about them. It might (and should) change how you understand what you’ve read.

I’d also add that Alexander pops up in scattered places in other ancient literature besides just “The Big Five” (historians), as do mentions of Macedonia, Philip, and earlier Macedonian kings. These also shape our understanding of Alexander.

So it’s all quite the rabbit hole!

Even if one chases down every ancient reference to Alexander (and there’s a chore!), without some familiarity with general ancient literature, understanding it can become a challenge without larger context.

I speak from experience.

Remember, I came into Alexander studies—and studies about ancient history generally—through the back door. I do not have a BA or MA in the field, and I was mostly unfamiliar with ancient literature … in part deliberately. When I was young, I had a love affair with JRR Tolkien and other (early) fantasy, which led me to fascination with British, Scandinavian, and other northern European myth. Greece and Rome? Way too last year! Ha.

When I was in grad school, I wound up looking up Alexander because I didn’t know who he was. I’d had to read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in my Shakespeare class as an English major, but that was about the extent of my Classical education. Therefore, I just didn’t have the proper context to understand a lot of what I was reading. That literally took years for me to gain. I went from enjoying and believing all Plutarch’s little anecdotes to distrusting a lot of them.

Btw, it’s by no means necessary to get a degree in the topic to gain this information! I just kept reading for the novel, and didn’t seem to know when to stop. 😉 In fact, part of why I’m here on Tumblr and YouTube, answering questions, is precisely so interested others can get some direction on what to read, and learn about important articles (and authors) on Alexander and ancient Macedonia who might not show up in the first 2 pages of a Google search (especially these days).

Saves plowing through everything the way I did when I first got started. I spent hours in university libraries, combing through every book and article I could lay my hands on, often by interlibrary loan. That was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s (and continuing in grad school). There was less to read then, honestly, but I know it can seem daunting to beginners. If I can save folks some time by pointing you towards authors who are widely respected—including some who may not be writing biographies you can find on Amazon—fantastic.

So it really does help when reading the sources to have some background on those sources’ authors, their world, and their biases. All that has a fancy name, btw: it's called historiography. And if you've been here any length of time, this isn't the first time I've ranted about its importance. Ha.

But YES, please, please do read the original sources! As I prepare to get back to writing my monograph on Hephaistion and Krateros, it’s not the secondary literature where I begin, but with my “wall of sources.” (And I do mean all the sources. Every single ancient mention of either man that’s survived.) Reading the sources is where our ideas come from. Then we go see what other people may have said about it. (The number of articles I thought about writing, only to realize "___ already covered that and said pretty much what I was going to say..." Ha.)

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* Optative and subjunctive indicate degrees of uncertainty about an action (verb). Optative is more uncertain than subjunctive. We tend to achieve this effect with modal verbs, by the way. So “ἐλῶ” means “I might go” or “I’d like to go” (optative) whereas “ἔρχωμαι” meants “I may go” (subjunctive). Hear the difference between might and may? But there’s more than one way to translate especially the first. So when is the speaker indicating a small likelihood—or a wish? In the translating, I make that decision, which impacts how you (the reader) understand the text.

Marcel Proust: "I became aware of the tangible reality of Wagner's work again when I revisited these insistent and fleeting themes that visit an act, only to depart and return, sometimes distant, drowsy, almost detached, yet at other times, while remaining vague, so urgent and so close, so internal, so organic, so visceral that it seems less a reprise of a motif than of a neuralgia." (French text)

Photo: Kristen Stewart reads Marcel Proust

Robert-Ernst Curtius: "What did we experience at our first encounter with Proust's books? The sudden surprise of touching something unknown; of feeling a new substance whose structure eluded us. We felt disoriented and compelled to engage in a mode of expression for which none of the habits of our mind were prepared. Strange encounter. Initially bewildered, then intrigued, and finally captivated, we soon found ourselves drawn in by a mysterious allure. Barely having entered this unexplored territory, we were charmed, then conquered, and something of our most intimate life was changed. Like Ulysses' companions in the land of the Lotus-eaters, we had tasted a fruit that made us forget the past of our mind and removed the desire to return to our former nourishment. Intoxicated by our discovery, we couldn't distinguish whether it was a new form of art or a new plan of life that was presenting itself to us. But upon regaining our composure, retracing the path through analysis, we recognized this very impossibility of distinguishing between aesthetic emotion and the upheaval of our entire being as the infallible sign of the revelation of a great work of art.

I would like to give full significance to this term of great art, which seems to me to be necessary to qualify Proust. Certainly, there is no lack of fine, engaging, and powerful works in contemporary production. But do almost all of them not seem to have their starting point in transmitted literary forms—either continuing them or taking them in the opposite direction, which is just another way of depending on them? But alongside this production grafted onto earlier literature, the steady growth of which would be sufficient to attest to its somewhat secondary quality, there are few works that arise as if outside the literary concerns of the time; they do not seem called upon by the "moment" or motivated by an artistic movement; they differ profoundly from usual literature but without any sense of a desire to differ. These works, which do not depend so much on literature as literature will not depend on them, born from the original effort of a powerful mind focused on life itself, are the ones I was thinking of when using the term great art.

In Marcel Proust's work, the creative power presents a spectacle all the more admirable in that it has been exercised upon the richest literary and intellectual culture, which, in a less powerful mind, could have posed an obstacle to such a fresh realization by either paralyzing it or leading it astray into delightful yet bookish alexandrines. Proust's art, instead of being hindered by the treasures of his literary memory, manages instead to highlight them or, furthermore, to render them anew to us. He knows how to blend spontaneous life with the entire inheritance of the past. In handling it, he maintains direct and immediate contact with the elusively fleeting material from which our life is woven. Proust presents himself to it with a sensitivity that seems untouched by any prior contact—otherwise, how would it succeed in capturing nuances of reality that had previously eluded us? The slightest layer of transmitted experience or habit that would have intervened between them and the receiving apparatus would have acted as a barrier, preventing them from being inscribed there. But this sensitivity is accompanied by a mind nourished by the richest and most diverse tradition—and one that lives in familiarity with Ruskin as well as Saint-Simon. It is from the encounter of two things that seem to exclude each other— the most freshly spontaneous sensitivity and the most culturally laden intelligence— (but which, in him, by penetrating each other, mutually lend support) that Proust's art derives its new and moving beauty.

In a more general sense, the profound originality of the great artist who has just passed away is revealed in this, that attitudes of the mind that we are accustomed to consider as distinct penetrate each other in him to the point of forming a homogeneous whole. Intelligence does not merely overlay emotion but becomes one with it. Feeling and analysis do not appear as two opposed terms between which a relationship can be established. Art will be life, and vice versa. Lastly, thought in Proust never gives the impression of being a foreign and external element. One can consider separately in his work psychology, poetry, science, observation, emotion. But it will always involve an artificial isolation that distorts the truth. All these elements that analysis attempts to separate form in him not a mixture, not even a fusion, but the blossoming of an identical, primordial, and indivisible experience. By pushing the analysis further, I believe one would be led to understand this profound unity that is perceived beneath the delightful complexity of his work as the externalization of the creative impulse from which it originates. His art arises from this unified and total vision that constitutes the life of the mind at its principle and in its fullness. In Proust, I can never dissociate beauty from truth. The profound and purifying emotion suggested by the evocation of the mysteries of life; the intimate contentment caused by highlighting the infinitely small aspects of our existence; the happiness felt in the revelation of its unsuspected richness; the introduction to a deeper inner life—these are the gifts we receive from Proust's art, but bathed in the same atmosphere and melted into a single harmony.

It is a new era in the history of the great French novel that begins with Proust. Solely to better delineate his originality and without aiming at a judgment at this moment, which is one of homage to a great deceased, one can nevertheless say that he surpasses Flaubert in intelligence as he surpasses Balzac in literary qualities and Stendhal in the understanding of life and beauty. Therefore, he must be regarded as the founder of a realm that he shares with no other.

To our intelligence as well as to our admiration, he imposes himself as a master among the greatest.

He is among the three or four names in contemporary French literature that are already or will be European names. Rooted in the most authentic French soil, he nevertheless far exceeds the boundaries that some seem eager to set for the French spirit. He has expanded the domain of the human soul; he has embellished all our lives. Allied with the great classical lineage of his homeland, he has nevertheless strayed from the confines of a too timid classicism. He has given himself free rein without conforming to a pre-established aesthetic. Here again, he has shown himself to be a creator. With the freedom permitted by mastery, he has annexed to the French tradition domains hitherto left fallow.

Emerging at a time when intellectual Germany was turning away from manifestations of the French spirit to focus more exclusively on its own heritage, he made us feel once again—speaking on behalf of a few, until others may come to know and offer their testimony—that today, as in the past, there are treasures common to the nations of our divided and troubled Europe."

ROBERT-ERNST CURTIUS

Tribute to Marcel Proust, La Nouvelle Revue Française, 1923

VIDEO:

'He who this love into my heart had breathed, whose will had placed the Wälsung at my side, true only to him, thy word did I defy.'

(German: 'Der diese Liebe mir in's Herz gehaucht, dem Willen, der dem Wälsung mich gesellt, ihm innig vertraut, trotzt' ich deinem Gebot.')

Brünnhilde: Gwyneth Jones Wotan: Donald McIntyre Die Walküre The Ring of the Nibelung (Der Ring des Nibelungen) Bayreuth 1979, Patrice Chéreau / Pierre Boulez

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the only direct quote we have from Hephaistion and I think it speaks volumes about his character and about his relationship to Alexander the Great (taking into consideration he later became Alexander's second-in-command).

Aveth is the only Queen dancer in the troupe. Queen ballerinas are rare, and just that fact makes her significantly more valuable than the other dancers. Because of that, she gets away with way more than a regular worker can ever allow themselves, and has privileges that others don't have.

Those privileges didn't make her arrogant though. Aveth is pretty down to earth and straightforward, and likes to help out others if she can. But sometimes she can be quite careless. Too careless for her own good sometimes.

Curtius is the one who's always there to keep her out of trouble. He is the exact opposite of Aveth.

Most of all he values hard work, discipline and diligence, and holds himself up to very high standards.

Aaaaand this is precisely why I’m still not 100% sold that Herakles was his.

Herakles of Macedon, Alexander's "Forgotten?" Son

Although as Monica (D’Agostini) reminded me, the baby would have been only about four when ATG died, so at that age, it was quite traditional for children to remain with their mother—and he’d sent Barsine to Pergamon, the Aeolian area where her family had a great deal of power and land. Typically, very young children were left out of historical accounts without a particular reason to mention them. One would think the birth of a healthy prince would count, but we hear about Alexander’s own birth only because notice of it coincided with two other pieces of good news for Philip (and because he became so important later). We don’t hear about Arrhidaios’s birth, much less any of the girls. Even the last is mentioned only because of how she died at Olympias’s hands.

Similarly, we know about Roxane’s pregnancy and stillbirth/miscarriage from the (very late) Metz Epitome. And we know Statiera died in childbirth from a tossed off comment in Plutarch and Justin. Arrian doesn’t mention either of these. That’s caused some to dismiss them both as fabricated, but the problem is we wouldn’t expect the campaign/military-focused Arrian to talk about them. Curtius does at least talk about Statiera, but because she fits into his narrative of an (early) clement ATG, he doesn’t attribute her death to childbirth but exhaustion—in part because a pregnant Statiera would conflict with how he’s presenting Alexander at that point in his narrative, suggesting that maybe he didn’t keep his hands off another man’s wife.

Monica thinks Barsine stayed with Alexander all the way into Baktria and was probably sent to Pergamon either when she became pregnant or after the baby was born. I’d bet on the former, to get her the best medical care. Remember Barsine’s age; she was older than Alexander—possibly approaching 40. Her daughter by Memnon was old enough to be married to Nearchos at Susa—which is why, after Alexander’s death, Nearchos brought Herakles forward as a candidate for king. The daughter may have been as young as 14/15, but that still makes her mother 35+ in 324. Barsine was married to Mentor before Memnon, although perhaps not for very long. Alexander probably didn’t want her trying to have a baby at the back of nowhere at her age, regardless of how many she’d already had. Artabazos “retired” around that same time, so perhaps they traveled back west together. (I’d have to check whether he stayed at the court.)

But the histories don’t reveal any of this. It’s pieced together from the age of Herakles at his death and mention of Barsine being given to Alexander as a mistress after Issos, plus the later prominence of her family—although that could have owed to long-standing guest-friendship between Artabazos and the Macedonian court. IOW, Barsine likely got her position as mistress because of her family’s earlier connection to the Argeads, and in turn, her position as mistress led to Artabazos’s elevated treatment later.

So that’s one likely scenario. But there are a few others. Barsine may have been a cover for Alexander’s affair with Statiera. As we know, Statiera (probably) died in childbirth but the baby couldn’t have been Darius, and therefore almost had to be Alexander’s. After she died (right before Gaugamela), Alexander may have left all the women in Babylon. He certainly didn’t drag Darius’s daughters off to Baktria. If that were the case, timing-wise, Herakles couldn’t be Alexander’s.

Or it's possible Barsine was Alexander’s mistress (not just a cover) even as he also had an affair with Statiera. No expectations existed for Alexander to have only one mistress at a time. I find it unlikely that he took up with Statiera until after he’d received at least the first letter from Darius, making it clear Darius wouldn’t negotiate for his family. So he may have started with Barsine, then took up with Statiera too, but also kept Barsine. Barsine's knowledge of Persia would have been invaluable to him. As for bringing Barsine to Baktria but not Darius’s daughters, they were much younger and perhaps less tough. Certainly they were less experienced politically, compared to the older, bilingual Barsine. So, I can see reasons for bringing her and not them.

The problem is simply that, when it comes to the women traveling with Alexander’s army, we are told so VERY little, from which we are then forced to infer so much. Ergo, disagreement easily ensues over how to interpret the titbits. That’s a large part of why I was open to hearing Monica’s alternative theories. (Well, that and the fact it’s not central to anything I’ve published, so any course-correction isn’t personal—ha.)

The difficulty is just that, after she’s brought to Alexander following Issos, we hear nothing about Barsine again until her daughter is selected for Nearchos’s wife. Then not again till Alexander’s death when Nearchos champions her son (and fails). Then not again until after Arrhidaios and Alexander IV are both dead, and Polyperchon tries to put Herakles forward but is bribed/talked out of it by Kassandros, so instead he kills both the 18-year-old Herakles and Barsine.

The problem is, we wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear about Barsine and Herakles, so that silence isn’t especially significant. That’s why an argument from silence is problematic. Alexander may, in fact, have taken an interest in his son, but wanted to keep him away from court until he was older, especially if he wasn’t legitimate. Alexander was all-too-accustomed to the politics of polygamy and recognized that bringing him to Babylon could make him a target, especially if he wasn’t old enough yet to travel with his father (under his father’s eye and protection). Alexander NOT taking a big interest in him would, ironically, act as protection.

Also, we don’t actually know where Barsine and Herakles were when Alexander died, except apparently not in Babylon. Alexander might have seen the boy earlier, however, once he was back in the west. Barsine could very well have met him to Ekbatana, as the Persian Royal Road goes from Sardis north until east of the Tigris, when it swings south towards Susa. But Persia had a LOT of roads, not just that one, and a road forked off the main trek to the capital of Ekbatana in Media. Easy travel. ATG was to have held a major festival there with athletic contests and all sorts of things, but everything got overshadowed by Hephaistion’s death.

Of more import is why he was passed over at Alexander’s death. I actually find this to be the one REAL sticking point in arguments about his parentage, but it cuts both ways.

Given that nobody knew if Roxane’s baby would be male, and the mental infirmity of Arrhidaios (enough that Perdikkas was appointed regent, as for a child, of a man in his mid-30s!), not choosing Herakles presents a problem. Any Argead male could inherit. Some have pointed out the resistance to Roxane’s son to explain resistance to Herakles too; not only was he part Persian, but the son of a mere mistress, not wife. I find that a weak argument. Barsine was half Greek (her mother was Greek, sister of Mentor and Memnon of Rhodes), making Herakles less than half Persian. If anything, the son of the thoroughly Hellenized Barsine would have been preferable to the unborn child of “barbarian” Roxane, legitimate or not.

If there were doubts about him AS Alexander’s son, however, that could explain why Nearchos’s suggestion was ignored. Except if he’d expected that to be a problem, it seems unlikely Nearchos would've put him forward. Perhaps years later, when Polyperchon tried, a cuckoo could have been slipped in, but in 323, that would've been harder. Also, the fact Kassandros paid off Polyperchon to kill Herakles, the last surviving Argead—didn’t just claim he wasn’t Alexander’s son—suggests Kassandros believed he was Alexander’s son.

I wanted to ask something: Were Alexander's generals jealous of Hephaestion because of his relationship with Alexander? I imagine that in some way they did feel something like that, but is there any conclusive evidence that says how they feel about it?

Macedonian officers were a bunch of sharks, with Alexander as the Great White

My header is the tl;dr version.

We know at least Krateros was jealous of Hephaistion; the sources tell us as much. Alexander even invented a cute little way of dealing with it, calling Hephaistion Philalexandros (Alexander loving or friend-of-Alexander) while Krateros was Philobasileus (king loving or friend-of-the-king). Hephaistion also appears to have tangled with Eumenes, although Eumenes tangled with a lot of people, from what I can tell. And, at least earlier in the campaign, Hephaistion and Krateros might have been, if not friends, at least friendly. But once Hephaistion rose in importance, he was in Krateros’s way.

Basically, all the fellows in Alexander’s orbit were in competition for Alexander’s affection, just as they’d later be in competition for Alexander’s empire after he died (the Era of the Successors or Diadochi).

Remember, in the ancient (pre-Christian) world, humility was not a virtue, and a GOOD person helped his friends and hurt his enemies. None of this “turn the other cheek” business, or “When they go low, we go high.” When they went low, you were expected to cut their throat as they bent.

That said, Curtius (Rufus) at least paints a picture of Hephaistion as someone careful in how he exercised his influence. In Curtius’s introduction of him in his history, he says Hephaistion had more freedom to upbraid the king than anybody else, but exercised it as if given by Alexander, not taken by himself. Elsewhere, Curtius calls him charming. In contrast, Plutarch (or at least Plutarch’s sources) paint a less flattering picture. I think which view modern historians accept depends on which primary source we trust more (or read first). 😉

Only in Plutarch do we find the episode of him pulling swords with Krateros. Curtius doesn’t mention it, nor does Diodoros or Arrian (Justin is too brief). But Diodoros does give the Philalexandros/Philobasileus line (when he recounts H.’s death). Diodoros also records a probably spurious letter Hephaistion supposedly wrote to Olympias, telling her to stop quarreling with him in her correspondence with Alexander. This is not a real letter and may owe to another incident where Alexander was reading a letter from her while sitting next to Hephaistion—who apparently leaned in to read with him. Alexander didn’t stop him but put his seal ring on his lips. I suspect Hephaistion regularly read his mail, but this time people happened to be watching.

Most of the quarrels related about Hephaistion appear to occur later—once his importance at the court had risen. And whatever you read in other historians (Green, Heckel, Anson, Cartledge, Worthington), he doesn’t appear to have been any more quarrelsome than anybody else—and maybe less, if Curtius can be trusted.