Figures of LGBTQ+ History: Alexander the Great
Written by Cassius Naylor, Assistant & Adviser to the CCMO & Co-Chair of Proud FT at Financial Times.
The historical record yields an inconsistent picture of the sexuality of Alexander III of Macedon (aka Alexander the Great). As with all history of the Classical Greek period, we are reading it through the lens of thousands of years of Roman, Abbasid, Byzantine, Medieval and even modern reinterpretation and, in many cases, propaganda.
This is especially true in the case of Alexander, who has been invoked by the supermasculine throughout human history, from Julius Caesar to Napoleon. Every one of those 'great men' wanted to fit Alexander's legacy into their own mould, based on the moral-cultural context of the society they lived in.
Alexander was King of Macedon, a Greek state that grew to great prominence during the reign of his father, Phillip II, at the end of the period we refer to as Classical Greece. He achieved military renown in his father's wars against the other Greek city states, notably annihilating the Sacred Band of Thebes at the Battle of Charonea in 338BC. He went on to defeat and conquer the entire Persian empire, dying young after having finally turned back from further conquest in India by a mutiny of his own men.
Macedon is said to have been tolerant of male homosexual activity even by the standards of the Greeks at the time, including the Athenians. Alexander grew up in this social context and is widely recorded as having bisexual proclivities (even though the labels 'homosexual' and 'bisexual' were neither used by the Greeks nor particularly useful in understanding their attitudes to sexuality, read more on that here). He married three women in his life and was as renowned for his bedroom as his battlefield conquests when it came to the opposite sex. Two of his male lovers are named: the aforementioned Hephaestion, cavalry commander and Alexander's childhood friend, and Bagaos, a Persian eunuch courtier. Sources speak of many, many more unnamed.
The former of greatest significance, variously described as merely Alexander's best friend to his lifelong intimate partner. The latter interpretation carries weight in textual sources, wherein upon arriving at the site of Troy, Alexander and Hephaestion are said to have offered sacrifice at the Temples of Achilles and Patroclus respectively (Homeric heroes from the Iliad who also can be interpreted as having been lovers). When Hephaestion died in 324BC, Alexander was beside himself with grief, instructing that the manes and tails of all horses should be shorn, the demolition of the battlements of the neighbouring cities and the banning of flutes and every other kind of music, refusing to eat and weeping for days on end. Alexander himself died less than a year later.
