#drypetis

Would Alexander Marry a Commoner?

First, thank you. 😊 I’m glad you both enjoyed the novels and felt they brought that world to life. I do hope to continue the story but Riptide is not (at least at present) interested in publishing the rest, as they aren’t even remotely Romance. (They took the first two, which is really one novel, because it did have a love story even if it’s really a coming-of-age historical.) I’m currently working on a monograph about Hephaistion and Krateros (non-fiction), so that’s eating up a lot of my time.

As for your question…. First, let’s separate “love” from “marriage,” as those two things did not necessarily go (in fact, very rarely went) together. The notion of marrying for love is really quite recent, (almost) all over the world. Marriage was, for Macedonian kings, a deeply political act. So, he wouldn’t marry a woman who didn’t serve a political purpose; 99% of the time, that would be a “royal” or other high-born woman.

Sorry there’s not a more romantic answer to that, but it’s honest.

Love it something different, although there, recall the Greeks recognized different sorts of love, and separated eros (desire) from philia (true love/deep friendship). Eros was assumed not to last, whereas philia of the best sort was long-standing, even lifelong. Greek men generally didn’t assume they’d feel philia for the women for whom they felt eros; that’s typical Greek misogyny of the time. Alexander was somewhat different from other men, in that he did seem to value the opinion of the women around him (certainly the older women from his mother to Ada to Barsine to Sisygambus)…but he still wouldn’t necessarily put them on a level with the men in his life.

Could he learn to? Perhaps. He might be better positioned than most, so I wouldn’t necessarily put it beyond the scope of possibility. Yet it would take a radical realignment of his world, one where he’d be around a woman long enough to learn to respect her enough to feel philia for her, not merely eros.

A time-travel situation is most likely, although the one example of that I’ve seen wasn’t (to me) at all convincing—in part because it put the (modern) woman in the past. Pull Alexander into the present, with Hephaistion already dead, and you might get something more believable ... because that removes two of the biggest problems. First, a world where men interacted very little with women, especially men on military campaign. And second…

Hephaistion.

Whether or not they remained physical lovers, Hephaistion was the dearest person in Alexander’s personal orbit. While certainly Alexander had flings with both women and teens/young men, Hephaistion remained central. I find it unlikely that would change while he was alive.

There have been a few attempts in novels to do an opposite-sex romance with Alexander, and all had to deal with the Hephaistion Problem. 😉 One could argue that even Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy grappled with this, and also had a Hephaistion Problem.

So, the first more recent one, and arguably the most successful, was a trilogy by (Alison) Spedding from the mid/late-80s (The Road and the Hills, A Cloud over Water, and The Streets of the City), wherein Ailixond (Alexander) meets Aleizon Ailix Ayndra (an Alexander-Hephaistion mix). They fall in love and conquer the world, then she takes over after he dies. Despite the way it sounds, it’s a fun read. It’s also not an historical, so she can play with the facts as she wishes.

Another by Jennifer Macaire (Time for Alexander Series) has Ashley, a professional journalist (and essentially a self-insert), time travel from the present into the past to interview Alexander. She falls in love with him, and with Hephaistion too (who’s inexplicably not called Hephaistion, but Plexis). The research is slap-dash with multiple problems from odd spelling choices (what is Seleucos? Seleukos or Seleucus—pick Greek or Latinized, please), to confusion on details. The one plus is more time to some of the women surrounding Alexander.

A late ‘60s trilogy by Helene Moreau (penname), reprinted as one long novel in the early ‘70s (by Playboy, no less), was called Roxana. Although, quite shockingly for the time, she did depict Alexander and Hephaistion as lovers, it's kinda-sorta a Roxana-Alexander love story. Except Roxana doesn’t love Alexander, who’s not a good guy; her true love is a Jewish fellow called Mordechai. Hephaistion, although a “rival” for Alexander, isn’t especially negative even thought he's a problem for Roxana’s plans to bind Alexander to her via desire.

Last, Stephanie Thornton flipped the script in her The Conqueror’s Wife, with the romance being Drypetis and Hephaistion. Alexander is a Bad Guy (as is Roxana, btw). While Thornton also makes ATG and Hephaistion lovers, she inadvertently paints same-sex relationships as negative by framing. (Or at least, I will hope it was inadvertent.) It’s a traditional m/f Romance, so Drypetis will win--and as Alexander is bad/evil, the message is that opposite-sex love “saves” Hephaistion from Alexander. Not sure she actually meant that, but it’s not queer-friendly. (There are no other positive gay people; Roxana's brother is a minx.) I think she used the same-sex affair to appear edgy and hip, but just wound up seeming homophobic.

Anyway, all of these try to foreground a female in Alexander’s life, or in Hephaistion’s—but must then deal with the problem of the Other. Spedding simply makes her main (female) character a Hephaistion analog. Macaire turns it into Threesome; Ashley falls for both men. Moreau and Thronton adopt more traditional love triangles, although Moreau’s is really a quadrilateral with Mordechai; Roxana is only using Alexander. And Thronton has her lead (Drypetis) “win” by making Alexander evil.

I will note that in all the novels I’ve read about Alexander, I have yet to see a woman author portray Hephaistion as evil/the bad guy, even when Alexander is evil/the bad guy. Even Moreau’s Hephaistion is neutral/nice to Roxana. It’s only male writers who depict him negatively. Make of that what you will. 😉

Of these four books, Spedding might be the only one to succeed because it’s epic (quasi-historical) fantasy; she’s not trying to be historical. After that, Thornton’s is perhaps the least inaccurate historically, but that doesn’t make it particularly good.

So, the biggest issue with giving Alexander a true (female) love is … Hephaistion.

I'll add that I don't like love triangles when they involve Alexander and Hephaistion, but not because I ship the two. I just don't like love triangles period. Too often in fiction, they become a quick way to inject drama because the author can't think of something more realistic. *roll of eyes* There are PLENTY of real-life problems that couples face that have nothing to do with a third (human) party. A love triangle can be interesting in a long-standing relationship like a marriage on the rocks (which is where they're most likely to occur in real life). But generally, I find love triangles in Romance (as opposed to lit fic) trite in execution, tbh.

Besides, when I read curtius 'Beside her sat one of her granddaughters, mourning for the recent loss of Hephaestion, whom she had married, and in the general sorrow was renewing her own reasons for grief. But Sisigambis alone felt the misfortune that had befallen all her family.....', I wonder if there is anything reliable in this account, does it try to imply that Hephaestion might have been nice to this girl?

Answering the second question first, he probably was nice enough to her. She was a royal princess, and her grandmother was fond of Alexander. And he himself seems to have been in favor of Alexander’s policy of integrating Persians, so he wouldn’t have been predisposed to treat her badly. And she’d have been inclined to make him happy, as her life more or less depending on it. Which brings me to the rest of the story.

The details are likely an exercise in ancient Roman “creative non-fiction.” Curtius does that a lot, embellishing on the historical record, which itself was embellished. So we shouldn’t give a lot of attention to the details, but Curtius was almost certainly correct in the general sorrow-fear these women felt when Alexander died. He’d been their protector. Without him, they’d have no idea about their futures. What Curtius gives to Sisygambus was almost certainly the alarm of every woman in Alexander’s harem: what will become of us now? That would probably generate a lot of tears, and also, perhaps, some cut-throat plans—as we see with Roxana.

The harem was, itself, a political hothouse, especially for those closest to the top. For the novels, I’ve given some thought to how I’ll be portraying the women/girls in the novels, just as I did to the sisters and wives in the women’s rooms in Macedonia.

Returning to your first question, I can find a bunch on Achilles in blogs [asks + Achilles] but none with exact numbers. BUT I do have the original article itself, of course, so below is my footnote that lays it all out:

Footnote 14 from “Philip’s and Alexander’s Use of Religious Cult in Our Extant Sources”:

In Plutarch, Herakles is referenced only twice in relation to Alexander, Achilles three times and Dionysos three. Justin, although shorter, references Herakles four times, Achilles two, and Dionysos only once. Diodoros mentions Herakles six times, Achilles three, and Dionysos two. Predictably, Curtius and Arrian have more. Curtius references Herakles nine times, Achilles once, and Dionysos seven, but Curtius is missing the first two chapters, which would have included the Troy visit, and has a large lacuna including the death of Hephaistion, both of which would likely have involved references to Achilles, and probably more of Herakles as well. Arrian shows the same disproportion: Herakles has twelve mentions, Achilles four, and Dionysos seven.

Hephaestion is an interesting character, we don't know much about him but I have always wonder how he was as a husband, in my research it seems that he wasn't so interest in women like others were. I have wonder if that make him a careless or a typical (in the context of the history) husband? Did he marry because Alexander say so or because he wants to ensure his place? Does he felt pity for the girl or he didn't care about her at all? Was a better husband than Alexander?

And talking about Drypetis, we know about the famous beauty of her mother and of Roxanne. But how do you think that beauty was? Certainly, not like my modern view about attractiveness of a female, so I wonder yours.

Sorry for the long post! 🙃

Hephaistion's Interest (or lack of it) in Women & Arguments from Silence

We know nothing about his interest (or lack of it) in women. He did marry in Susa in 324 because Alexander told him to…along with 90 other officers. That doesn’t mean he was against the idea—may have been one of the few fully in favor of it for the politics.

While fictionally I’ll make hay over his lack of recorded lovers (of either gender), from an academic point of view…it’s meaningless.

This is probably a good time to review “arguments from silence,” and why they’re so tricky.

An ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE suggests a lack of evidence is significant. BUT this only works if one can demonstrate that such evidence ought to be there…and isn’t.

That’s hard to do for the ancient world as “a lack of evidence” describes our cursed lot. My modern historian colleagues are regularly astonished by how little we have, and what we can spin out from that little.

I bring this up is because arguments from silence are too common in pop history, which too often does them badly due to a lack of understanding regarding 1) what evidence IS available, 2) what should be available, and 3) what’s absolutely unsurprising not to find.

Sometimes students will ask me, “But didn’t they write stuff like that down?” (‘That’ varying.) The answer is often, “No.” Or more colorfully, “They didn’t give a shit.” Even in the Roman Empire, they lacked bureaucratic record-keeping as we understand it. In Greece, centuries earlier, a few city-states kept some records, but most didn’t, especially prior to the mid-4thCentury BCE. It’s connected to the “epigraphic habit”: the desire to record information (in public) for posterity, and the idea that record-keeping might be a good general idea often merge.

Even so, WHAT they thought worthy of recording isn’t always what we’d like to know. This, in turn, pertains to how they wrote historical texts: what they chose to report (or not).

So, with that background…

The problem with knowing Hephaistion’s sexual interest (or lack of it) in women is how and why our sources relate such information.

In short: they mostly don’t.

This owes to their LASER focus on Alexander. Even then, what each source tells about him varies. I think we can probably be sure we know all Alexander’s wives, although Barsine’s status is not completely clear (imo). I assume she was at least a palakē, which is a formal mistress: less than a wife, but more than a hetaira. Yet given Macedonian marriage practices, perhaps she was a wife in Macedonian eyes? The Greeks regularly “demoted” Macedonian royal wives to mistresses, so I don’t trust our sources on this score.

Whatever the case, we don’t know all Alexander’s female (or male) sexual liaisons outside his wives because the sources mostly don’t care. When they do care (ala Plutarch and Curtius), it’s for some—often Romanized—moral point. Which is a looong-ass way from anything the Macedonians cared about.

And if we don’t even know his, how can we assume we know his officers’? Hell-to-the-no!

We hear about these women only if they matter to the larger (Alexander-driven) narrative. So we know the name of Philotas’s mistress, Antigonē, because she was hired by Krateros to bring pillow talk back to Alexander. We know Harpalus’s mistresses because he spent oodles of treasury funds on them, and got in trouble for it (twice). We recognize the name Laïs because she later became the long-time mistress (palakē) of Ptolemy I, mother of some of his important offspring in the Successor wars.

Ergo, not knowing the names of Hephaistion’s mistresses—or whether he had any—is not significant. Outside of special circumstance, we wouldn’t expect to.

We DO know the name of his wife from the mass-marriages at Susa in the spring of 324 because she was a princess, sister of Alexander’s wife, and her selection for him had distinct political significance. Yet that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a wife already, back in Macedon. Others of Alexander’s officers did–one reason many promptly divorced their Persian brides after Alexander’s death. I note the possibility largely as it illustrates the level of what we don’t know.

My educated hunch is that Hephaistion’s marriage to Drypetis was his first marriage. And I don’t believe he had any children (even by-blows), or we’d have heard about them as a result of Alexander’s extravagant grief. Yet this is far from saying he had no mistresses—or boyfriends, for that matter.

Regarding Drypetis and his relationship with her…it’s a complete blank. We just don’t know how Hephaistion treated her, what she thought of him, or what he thought of her. They weren’t married long enough. The weddings were in early spring, after ATG got back to Susa following the Gedrosian march/rest in Karmania. He spent a while sorting business in Susa before he went on to Opis (and subsequent unrest/mutiny there). I suspect Hephaistion and Drypetis were married no more than 6-7 months. He died in early/mid-October. She wasn’t pregnant by his death, but given how busy that period was, it could be a function of his duties and lack of time.

As for the beauty of Persian royal/elite women, it seems to have been something remarked upon by more than just Alexander historians. We lack images of Achaemenid Persians, alas, but below is a lapis lazuli bust of among the most famous: Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, wife of Darius, and mother of Xerxes (lived second half of the 6th century BCE). Note the large eyes, high eyebrows (apparently plucked), and small mouth. Given the tendency to idealizing in Ancient Near Eastern art, this suggests what would have been considered high beauty.

Beneath her is a Roman copy of Praxiteles’s original Aphrodite of Knidos—considered the ideal of Greek female beauty in the early-mid 4th century BCE (based on the incomparable Phryne, Praxiteles’s mistress).

Both have an oval face with full cheeks, and we can see Aphrodite’s nicely plump. That meant something! She had enough to eat = wealth. The modern starved-skinny model with long face, strong jaw, and stark cheekbones…that’s attractive now partly owing to what photographs well: prominent features and thinness (because the camera adds pounds). Persians and Greeks preferred rounder features, heart-shaped faces, small bow mouths, soft jaws, and fullness in the body (plump, not overweight). About the only hold-over would be large eyes.

What I haven’t really noted is coloring…other than a preference for pale skin as that signified one had slaves (= rich) and didn’t have to work in the fields outside. Hair color and eye color just wasn’t that big of a deal. Sometimes it comes to the fore: gray-eyed Athena. (Although the word is generic for blue/gray/greenish.) Similar for Apollo and Dionysos, in the Homeric hymns. Dionysos had black hair there (as did Apollo). Both “blond-up” only in the Classical era. And Hera was noted for her extraordinarily beautiful “cow-eyes.” E.g., large and dark-dark brown.

BUT, because I love to support the Gingers of the World…RED-blond hair was considered the most desired in Greece. Aphrodite was a strawberry blonde (at least sometimes), as was Helen…when anybody bothered to note it. And (quite probably) Alexander.

We do not know how far along Roxane was when Alexander died, but she became pregnant certainly after Hephaistion’s death.

Hephaistion died in October, likely the second half of October. Alexander died c. June 10th. I say “c.” as there is some doubt as to whether he died that morning, or simply fell into paralysis so that they couldn’t tell he was still alive, explaining why his body may not have begun to decompose for two days in the Babylonian summer heat…he wasn’t dead yet.

That’s eight months after Hephaistion died. Roxane did not give birth immediately after his death, although we don’t know exactly when she did.

To the second question, you may have confused Drypetis with Statiera, Alexander’s wife (and Drypetis’ sister) who was supposedly pregnant too—why Roxane had her murdered with help from Perdikkas. How soon after ATG’s death this occurred isn’t specified, but likely quite quickly, as when the officers and troops convened in Babylon just the day after his “death” and then the day after that (it was quite a mess) to choose a successor, only Roxane’s unborn child is mentioned. That hints that Statiera (and baby) were already dead.

Or the reports that she’d been pregnant in the first place and killed were made later in the Successor Wars to throw shade on Roxane and Perdikkas. Given the viciousness of the Successor Wars, that’s not outside the range of possibility. The theories of Alexander’s poisoning also almost certainly owed to Successor-Era rumors against Antipatros.

In any case, regencies and empire partition were decided within a week of Alexander’s death. Statiera was nowhere mentioned in any of this. I expect she was…

1) never pregnant at all, and her murder by Roxane with Perdikkas’ help an attempt to slander Perdikkas’s party. It painted Roxane as a vicious barbarian, even echoing Olympias’s murder of Kleopatra, Philip’s last wife, and her infant daughter not long after Philip’s death. As the regent of Alexander IV, Perdikkas was allied with Olympias.

Or, 2) Statiera was killed inside 48 hours of Alexander, so there would have been no suggestion that they wait to see if she produced a son.

As for Drypetis, Beth Carney has suggested Statiera and Parysatis were the ones killed (if they were killed at all). Parysatis was Alexander’s third wife, also married in June of 324, granddaughter of Artaxerxes III Ochus, giving him a wife from both royal lines. Statiera had higher status as the daughter of the immediate former king, but if Roxane really did decide to kill ATG’s other wife because she was pregnant—or could claim to be—she would aim for them both, in case Parysatis was pregnant too. Killing Drypetis served no concrete purpose.

As for Drypetis being pregnant—highly unlikely. If Drypetis had been, given Alexander’s state of mind after Hephaistion’s death, I’d fully expect her pregnancy to have been made much of, and so noted in our sources. It’s the same reason I don’t think he had any issue (that he knew of). Again, eight months passed between the deaths of the two men. Sure, it’s possible she was just barely pregnant when Hephaistion fell ill, and so would have been only in her final month or so at Alexander’s death, but I find it more likely she never had time to get pregnant in the first place. She was married to Hephaistion in June, and he was dead by October. That’s only 3-4 months.

Note that Alexander didn’t get one (or both) of his wives pregnant until after. And not because he was sexually faithful to Hephaistion (or otherwise disinterested in women). Rather, I find it probable that Hephaistion’s death reminded Alexander of his own mortality, and he decided he’d better get a wiggle on. I doubt he was emotionally up to it in the first few months, but he had at least Roxane and possibly Statiera knocked up—and far enough along to realize they were pregnant—by his death.

I’ll also note the Metz Epitome states that Roxane had been pregnant once already but miscarried in India. Given her youth at her marriage (14-16), that’s no great surprise. In addition, Darius’s wife, Statiera’s mother, supposedly died in childbirth just before the Battle of Gaugamela, well over nine months after she was captured by Alexander. The babe was almost surely Alexander’s. If I remain skeptical that Herakles was ATG’s, largely because he’s never mentioned until post-mortem, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Herakles was his child by Barsine.

I've answered this across a couple prior posts, so will point to those. Two are short, one is longer, but all together, should get at the answer. :-)

Hephaistion's potential wives or children

Hephaistion and Alexander as parents

What happened to Hephaistion's possessions (includes why there probably weren't any children)

His only known wife was Drypetis, the younger sister of Statiera, daughter of Darius III. We don't know exactly when in 324 the Susa marriages happened; my guess is spring. So they were only married about six months. They had no known issue, nor do we know of any bastard children. I doubt he had any or we’d have heard about it after his death.

This was a super-high status marriage. Alexander made him his brother-in-law. That's the reason given for the marriage, in fact. Alexander wanted their children to be cousins. Sweet. :-)

Otherwise, we know absolutely nothing about any romantic ties or sexual arrangements, other than the obvious probable one to Alexander himself.

Not too much should be made of that. We don't know a lot about prior marriages for most of the upper echelons unless they went on to survive Alexander and it became important in the era of the Diadochi. For comparison, we know Krateros married Amastris in Susa, and later married Phila, Antipatros's daughter (who gave him his only son, also Krateros, probably born posthumously).

But the entire period before the Susa weddings. We know nada about any prior marriages or mistresses or boyfriends for Krateros.

Roxana, Olympias, and Potential Conflict with Hephaistion

May I just say, Damn, I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when Roxana first met Olympias! Talk about two powerhouses. Can you imagine?

Yes, misogyny is at the root of Roxana’s bad rep, same as for Olympias. Occasionally she’s rehabilitated in fiction—far more than Olympias. And that, I fear, owes to ageism. The Cute Young Girl can be perceived as nice, or at least misunderstood, but Olympias must be the Mean Old Mother.

Anyway, Roxana was a survivor. She did what was necessary. I understand why she had Statiera killed, even if she didn’t know her child would be male, or even live. Had Statiera been allowed to give birth, and the babe was male, it would absolutely trump any son she had. Ergo, Statiera had to die. I’m not sure why she also killed Drypetis, except as a witness. Or maybe both princesses of the blood had been classic Mean Girls to Sogdian Roxana from the hills. She doesn’t seem to have bothered Parysatis, who wasn’t pregnant. (Edited to add: Beth Carney thinks it's an error in Curtius, and it really was Parysatis killed along with Statiera, just in case she might be pregnant too. Possible, although more likely that Drypetis happened to be with her sister when ambushed by Perdikkas's men.)

As for pitting Roxana against Hephaistion... I suppose a few assume it because Roxana killed Drypetis as well as Statiera, but see just above.

The REAL reason I suspect they do it, is a mix of anachronistic and overly romantic thinking. To be in contention, they’d have had to be vying for the same place in Alexander’s life/heart/court.

I mean—WHAT the everloving fuck?

Seriously. The whole Alexander-Hephaistion-Roxana-Bagoas love square, or whatever you want to call it, drives me flippin’ BUGGY. It needs to DIE. It’s so distorted, so modern, and so flat ridiculous. I blame the Olive Stone film for that and his crazy Oedipal complex crap too (although he stole some of that from Renault).

Another point: putting Hephaistion into conflict with Roxana and/or Bagoas for Alexander’s romantic attention is really reductive. It makes Hephaistion no more than a love interest. NOT A HIGH-PLACED MARSHAL. It’s not only horribly modern but also heteronormative.

KRATEROS, not Roxana, much less Bagoas, was Hephaistion’s chief rival.

Roxana and Hephaistion were never in conflict. Roxana could never displace Hephaistion. Hephaistion not only wouldn’t have cared if Alexander married her, but he probably favored the wedding (unlike most of the other high officers). He seems to have supported, perhaps even encouraged Alexander in his Persianizing for pragmatic reasons. Marrying the girl would get them all out of Baktria, which had become a nightmare scenario by that point. Philip had made an art of marrying his way to peace. The main objection from most of the men wasn’t to Alexander taking the girl, but honoring her with his first marriage. If he’d already had a couple wives, they might not have cared as much. But she was too foreign (even more than a Thracian).

Alexander also needed an heir. If Roxana wasn’t as highborn as Statiera (and almost certainly by then, Alexander already intended to marry Darius’s daughter), she still had a womb and could give him a son in the meantime.

So, I see no reason at all for Hephaistion to have objected, or to have disliked the girl, who was probably half his age anyway. Nor would she have had any reason to dislike him, even if he was sleeping with Alexander still. If anything, she’d likely have curried his favor, especially if he had encouraged Alexander to marry her. She needed an ally, preferably more than one. By the time she murdered Drypetis, he was a year dead.

Anyway, truth is, she may not have seen him much. She’d have been in the baggage train most of the time. She might have seen more of Krateros, at least after India, as he took the baggage train inland by the safer route. So if she did dislike Hephaistion, maybe it owed more to being on Team Krateros in that infamous squabble. Ha.