It
seems peculiar to give this question a whole page all its own, but
there's
so much out there on the internet about Alexander and Hephaistion as
lovers,
that maybe it deserves a page (and some sanity). First,
there
are gay interest sites who use Alexander and Hephaistion as models. (Click
here for one example) Then there are the "Alexander wasn't
gay!" sites.
(Click
here for an example, but you have to scroll down.)
What
too often neither group seems to understand is that Alexander and
Hephaistion
themselves would've been baffled by all the hullabaloo -- not to
mention
the label "gay."
The problem is that people on both
sides keep looking at the question as if Alexander and Hephaistion
lived
now. But they didn't. They lived then. And
they
thought about it all very differently from the way we do. Too
many
people
insist on filtering facts through the beliefs and customs of their own
society (or religion or political agenda), and don't see that people in
other places and times really can think differently about very
basic
things, including sex. (I've found one
notable and pleasant exception.)
Some just don't realize their way of thinking
is
different, but
some don't want to have their safe ideas about the world
challenged.
Myself, I don't have much patience for the latter group.
Apparently, the Greeks didn't
worry
about
who you had sex with, just what role you took.
It was about power and social position. So if a guy took a
passive
role with someone of lesser social status than him, that was a Bad
Thing.
(He
was making himself like a woman.) But if he took the
dominant
role, it didn't matter. His partner could be a woman, a boy, or
younger
man. Among some groups, love between two men was considered
superior
because, of course, men were superior. Thus, love with an
'inferior' woman would always be an 'inferior' love. But even two
men didn't have an equal relationship, by our modern
understanding.
One person was always higher on the social food chain. For
instance,
Alexander was Hephaistion's social superior even though they were about
the same age, and it would be assumed in their society that Alexander
took
the dominant role. That doesn't mean they couldn't genuinely love
and care for one another. What it means is that the ancient
Greeks
(and Macedonians) had an entirelydifferent set of
assumptions
about what sex -- and love -- were for. Once again, we're
back to
the idea that people in different times and places think differently
about
very basic things. This is one reason I avoid the term "gay" for
Alexander and Hephaistion (or
any other ancient Greek
figure).
I'm
very supportive of gay rights, it figures into my voting choices, and
it's about time same-sex marriages were recognized. But
using "gay" for ancient Greece is
anachronistic.
It brings to mind modern (and often more equal) pairings. The
best
term to use for Greek same-sex attraction is "homoerotic."
So . . . do I really think Alexander
and Hephaistion were lovers? Yes, I do, at least when they were
young.
But y'know -- it's not something I lose a lot of sleep over.
Being
Alexander's sometime-lover was not how they defined their own
relationship.
Alexander called Hephaistion "philalexandros" -- Alexander's friend --
and that was what mattered to them most.
ADDITIONAL
NOTE: Since Stone's
Alexander film, this page is getting even more hits than normal, and I
thought I'd make an additional comment on categorization. It's a
tricky thing. How we talk about something reflects the ways that
our culture and language understands the world, and it's very difficult
to talk about -- or even to conceive of -- something for which we have
no words. Nonetheless,
as time progresses, human understanding changes -- for better or
worse -- and modern categories of 'sexuality' are recent
constructs reflecting modern (particularly Western) views. Are
they absolutes? Well, personally, I
don't believe in absolutes. If there's an objective reality, we
can't know what it is, caught as we are in our own time, culture, and
personal story. This is even more true when it comes to the
'social sciences,' such as psychology.
Some modern reviewers, enthusiasts,
nay-sayers, and interested others have resisted recognizing any
distinction between ancient sensibilities and modern when it comes to
sex, as if it were mere semantics. Gay is gay is gay,
right? Such resistence reflects a disturbing inability to get
beyond culturally-imbedded assumptions. In short, it's horribly
ethnocentric and arrogant.
A more interesting question is whether the ancients understood what
modern psychology would label 'gay,' 'straight' and 'bisexual' --
whether they had words for it or not. And the answer to that is
... perhaps. Ancient writings do
suggest they recognized that some preferred their own sex, some
preferred the other sex, and some were attracted to both in varying
degrees of intensity. But
here's where categorization gets tricky. Even if they recognized these tendencies, they
clearly didn't think them
important enough to create labels, much less conceive
of them in the same ways that we do.
For instance, it wasn't necessarily the 'lovers of men' who
were assumed to be effeminate, but men obsessed with women. What a twist!
But that reflects very different assumptions, doesn't it? The
modern equation of effeminacy with homosexuality assumes that gay men
really want to be women, but the ancient Greek assumption was that
loving women 'to excess' could cause men to become womanish themselves
and behave 'ou kata nomon'
(contrary to culture) or even 'ou
kata phusin'
(contrary to nature). In general, the Greeks were concerned with
excessive desire of any
kind. We have only to recall the admonition at Delphi from
Apollo: moderation in all things. It wasn't what the desire
was focused on that concerned
them, but the control one excercized over it. A katapugos or kinaidos was not a 'fairy,' but
simply wanton -- insatiable and constantly seeking sex past appropriate
boundaries ... and that could mean by serving as a passive partner in
male-male relations when he shouldn't, or by committing adultery with
another man's wife.
Finally, while it is true that male-male relationships tended to
involve partners of differing ages, that's a notably Athenian pattern
based on Athenian evidence ... and it's quite the mistake to assume
that Athenian norms held true in other Greek city-states. (Rather
like assuming everyone in the U.S. shares New York
sensibilities.) In fact, we have evidence that in Macedonia at
least, the erastes and eromenos could be much closer in
age -- coevals -- than was (apparently) considered acceptable in
Athens. Sostratos and Hermolaos -- both Pages in Alexander's army
(and infamous for participating in the Pages' Conspiracy) -- are
referred to in Arrian (4.13.3) specifically with the erastes/eromenos terminology, yet
could only have been a few years apart in age, at most. No one
remarked on that as unusual -- suggesting it wasn't considered so.
Yes, their conceptualizations of sex were just as complicated,
paradoxical and downright confusing as are ours -- they were just
complicated, paradoxical and confusing in different directions.
*************************************************************
As this particular page gets a lot of direct hits and I've found
some of it drifting, I'm putting a special notice here ...
MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS COPYRIGHTED.
As noted elsewhere, you must cite it
properly for papers, and you must contact me if you wish to
use any of it for your own webpage. You may not simply cut and
paste. It's not hard to get my permission, but if I find out you have cut-and-pasted material
without asking first, I'll require you to remove it and you won't be
granted permission to use it. Just ask first; it's no big deal and
will save us both a headache. ;>
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It
seems peculiar to give this question a whole page all its own, but
there's
so much out there on the internet about Alexander and Hephaistion as
lovers,
that maybe it deserves a page (and some sanity). First,
there
are gay interest sites who use Alexander and Hephaistion as models. (Click
here for one example) Then there are the "Alexander wasn't
gay!" sites.
(Click
here for an example, but you have to scroll down.)
What
too often neither group seems to understand is that Alexander and
Hephaistion
themselves would've been baffled by all the hullabaloo -- not to
mention
the label "gay."