Hephaestion – Omnium Amicorum Carissimus

Hephaestion

Hephaistion Amyntoros (Hephaestion, or Hephaistion, son of Amyntor)

Curtius calls him “omnium amicorum carissimus” to the king: dearest of all the friends. Alexander himself named him “Philalexandros”–friend of Alexander–in contrast to his great rival, Craterus (Krateros), who was merely “Philobasileus”–friend of the king. By the time of his death in Ecbatana in 324 BCE (only eight months before Alexander’s own) he was the second man in the empire (Chiliarch), married to the sister of Alexander’s own wife.

He and Alexander were coevals, and had shared their education under Aristotle at Mieza. They may have known one another before that. He was not a great military leader, and Alexander seems to have kept him away from important commands in actual battle. But this does not make him the incompetent or sycophant which he has sometimes been painted. Curtius stresses that he had great freedom to speak his mind to the king. And snatches of evidence in the extant sources suggest his real gifts were diplomatic and logistical, not military. It would be wrong to dismiss him as unimportant, and unnecessary to assume him a mere yes-man in order to get along with the king. His skills and those of Alexander were complimentary, not competitive.

We know little about his looks or personality. He was tall and, apparently, handsome. He also seems to have had a reputation for both charm and quarrelsomeness by turns. Later speculation whispered that he and the king had been lovers. While this is nowhere stated plainly, it is entirely possible. Nonetheless, it would be reductive to characterise their relationship solely in this way. Our model of friendship is not consonant with theirs. Within these ancient societies where homoerotic desire was freely, sometimes emphatically, expressed, intense friendships might well develop a sexual expression even while that expression was not the focus of the friendship.

Perhaps in the end, Alexander’s own name for Hephaistion is best: Philalexandros. And so he has been known down through history: dearest of all the friends of the great Alexander.

Article by Jeanne Reames-Zimmerman , The Pennsylvania State University.

Hephaestion´s relationships

Hephaestion

Little is known of Hephaestion’s personal relationships, beyond his extraordinarily close friendship with Alexander The Great. Alexander was outgoing, charismatic man, who had many friends, but his dearest and closest friend and confidant was Hephaestion. Theirs was a friendship which had been forged in boyhood. It endured through adolescence, through Alexander’s becoming a king, through the hardships of campaigning and the flatteries of court life, and their marriages.

Their tutor, Aristotle, described such a friendship as “..one soul abiding in two bodies”. That they themselves considered their friendship to be of such a kind is shown by the stories of the morning ater  the battle of Issus. Diodorus, Arrian and Curtius all describe the scene, when Alexander and Hephaestion went together to visit the captured Persian royal family. Its senior member, the queen Sisygambis, knelt to Hephaestion to plead for their lives, mistaking him for Alexander, because he was taller, and both young men were wearing similar clothes. When she realised her mistake, she was acutely embarrassed, but Alexander reassured her with the words, “You were not mistaken, Mother; this man too is Alexander”. Their love for each other was no secret, as is borne out by their own words. Hephaestion, when replying to a letter to Alexander’s mother, Olympias, said “..you know that Alexander means more to us than anything”. Arrian says that Alexander, after Hephaestion’s death, described him as “..the friend i valued as my own life”. Paul Cartladge describes their closeness when he says: “Alexander seems actually to have referred to Hephaestion’s as his alter ego”. 

Alexander and Hephaestion enter the tent of the captive royal family of Darius. From a 1696 edition of Curtius.

Their friendship was also a working partnership; in all that Alexander undertook, Hephaestion was at his side. They worked well together; it is possible to discern a pattern, when studying Hephaestion’s career, of Alexander’s constant trust in, and increasing reliance on Hephaestion. By the time of the advance into India, after the deaths of senior generals from the older generation, there had been worrying instances among senior officers of their own generation, of treachery, a lack of sympathy with Alexander’s aims of further integration of Persians into the army, and of sheer incompetence. Time ater time, when Alexander needed to divide his forces, he entrusted half to Hephaestion, knowing that in him he had a man of unquestionable loyalty, who understood and sympathised with his aims, and above all, who got the job done.

Hephaestion’s career

Hephaestion

Sharing Alexander’s upbringing, Hephaestion would have learned to fight and to ride well from an early age. His first taste of military action was probably the campaign against the Thracians while Alexander was regent (followed by Philip II’s Danube campaign 342 BC) and the battle of Chaeronea 338 BC while he was still in his teens. His name is not mentioned in list of high ranking officers during the early battles of Alexander’s Danube campaign 335 BC, or the invasion of Persia, and nor are the names of Alexander’s other close friends and contemporaries, suggesting that their promotions, when they achieved them, were earned by merit.

Hephaestion’s career was never solely a military one. Right from the start, he was also engaged in special missions, sometimes diplomatic, sometimes technical. The first mention of his career in the sources is a diplomatic mission of some importance. After the battle of Issus 333 BC, when Alexander was proceeding south down the Phoenician coast and had received the capitulation of Sidon, Hephaestion was “… authorised to appoint to the throne the Sidonian he considered most deserving of that high office.” Hephaestion took local advice, and chose a man distantly related to the royal family, but whose honesty had reduced him to working as a gardener. The man, Abdalonymus, had a successful royal career, fully justifying Hephaestion’s choice.

After the siege of Tyre 332 BC, Alexander entrusted his fleet to Hephaestion, who had orders to skirt the coast and head for Gaza, their next objective, while Alexander himself led the army overland. Hephaestion’s task was not an easy one, for this was not the Athenian fleet with which Alexander had started, and had earlier disbanded, but a motley collection of semi-reluctant allies of many nationalities, who would need holding together with patience and strength. Furthermore, on arrival at Gaza, the cargo of siege engines had to be unloaded, transported across difficult terrain, and reassembled.

Plutarch, while writing about Alexander’s correspondence, reveals an occasion when Hephaestion was away on business, and Alexander wrote to him. The subject matter suggests that this took place while they were in Egypt. What business Hephaestion was attending to we do not know, but Andrew Chugg has suggested that it was concerned either with his command of the fleet or Athenian diplomacy. He quotes sources which suggest that Hephaestion had been approached by Aristion of Athens to effect a reconciliation between Alexander and Demosthenes, and certainly, Athens’ inaction during the revolt of the Spartan king, Agis, would seem to support the idea. As Chugg says, “If he did persuade Alexander to reach an accommodation with Demosthenes at this critical juncture, as would seem likely from the circumstances, then he was significantly responsible for saving the situation for Macedon in Greece by preventing the revolt of Agis spreading to Athens and her allies.”

It is likely, though not certain, that it was Hephaestion who led the advance army from Egypt to bridge the Euphrates river. Darius of Persia sent Mazaeus to hold the opposite bank while the bridging work was in progress. This Mazaeus was the commander who threw away what looked like certain victory on the Persian right at the battle of Gaugamela 331 BC, and later became Alexander’s governor of Babylon. Robin Lane Fox has an interesting suggestion that conversation with Hephaestion may have won Mazaeus over: “It is conceivable that the battle of Gaugamela was partly won on the banks of the Euphrates and that Mazaeus’ reinstatement was less a sign of magnanimity than of a prearranged reward.”

It is at Gaugamela that mention is first made of Hephaestion’s rank. He is called the “… commander of the bodyguards (somatophylakes).” This is not the Royal Squadron, whose duties also included guarding the king in battle, and which was at that time commanded by Cleitus—a man of the older generation—but a small group of close companions specifically designated to fight alongside the king. Hephaestion was certainly in the thick of things with Alexander, for Arrian tells us he was wounded, and Curtius specifically mentions that it was a spear wound in the arm.

After Gaugamela, there is the first indication that Alexander intended reconciliation with the Persians, and that Hephaestion supported him in this unpopular policy. One evening in Babylon, Alexander noticed a high-born woman obliged to dance as part of the entertainment. Curtius explains: “The following day, he (Alexander) instructed Hephaestion to have all the prisoners brought to the royal quarters and there he verified the lineage of each of them.”Alexander had realised that people from noble families were being treated with little dignity, and wanted to do something about it. That he chose Hephaestion to help him shows that he could rely on Hephaestion’s tact and sympathy. Yet Alexander could also rely on Hephaestion for firmness and resolve. When his policies had led to a plot against his life, the possible involvement of a senior officer, Philotas, caused much concern. It was Hephaestion, along with Craterus and Coenus, who insisted on, and actually carried out, the customary torture.