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.

Hephaestion : Childhood and education

Hephaestion

Hephaestion 356 BC – 324 BC, general in the army of Alexander The Great, Alexander’s life long friend and lover.

Hephaestion, son of Amyntor, was a Macedonian nobleman and a general in the army of Alexander The Great. Hephaestion was the dearest of all the Alexander’s friends; he had been brought up with Alexander and shared his life and his secrets. Friendship lasted their whole lives, and was compared, by others as well as themselves, to that of Achilles and Patroclus.

His military career was distinguished. A member of Alexander The Great’s personal bodyguard, he went on to command the Companion cavalry, and was entrusted with many other task through Alexander’s ten year campaign in Asia, including diplomatic missions, the bridging of major rivers, sieges, and the foundation of new settlements. Besides being a soldier, engineer and diplomat, he corresponded with the philosophers Aristotles and Xenocrates, and actively supported Alexander in his attempts to integrate Greeks and Persians. Alexander formally made him his second-in-command when he appointed him Chiliarch of the empire, and made him part of the royal family when he gave him as his bride Drypetis, sister to his own second wife, Stateira, both daughters of Darius III of Persia. When Hephaestion died suddenly at Ecbatana, Alexander was overwhelmed with grief. He petitioned the oracle at Siwa to grant Hephaestion divine status, and Hephaestion was honoured as a Divine Hero. At the time of his own death eight months later, Alexander was still planning lasting monuments to Hephaestion’s memory.

Childhood and education

Hephaestion’s exact age is not known. No concise biography has ever been written about him, likely stemming from the fact that he died before Alexander and none of those among Alexander’s companions who survived him would have had a need to promote someone other than themselves. Many scholars cite Hephaestion’s age as being similar to Alexander’s so it’s fair to assume that he was born about 356 BC. Hephaestion is said to have become a page in 343 BC, a role common to adolescent boys of the aristocratic class in Macedon. Now a member of court life, it is possible that the two future conquerors would have met around this time.

The only surviving anecdote from Hephaestion’s youth comes courtesy of the Alexander Romance. According to this tale “..one day when Alexander was 15 years old..sailing with Hephaestion, his friend, he easily reached Pisa and he wentt off to stroll with Hephaestion”. That Alexander’s exact age is given provides another clue to Hephaestion’s upbringing because at fifteen Alexander and his companions were at Mieza studying under Aristotle. Hephaestion has never been named among those who who attended the lectures at Mieza, but his close friendship with Alexander at that age suggests strongly that he was numbered among them. More telling is Hephaestion’s name being found in a catalogue of Aristotle’s correspondences. The letters themselves no longer exist, but for them to have found their way into an oficial catalogue, their content must have been of some significance. It implies that Hephaestion received a good education, and shows that Aristotle was impressed enough by his pupil to send letters throughout Alexander’s expanding empire to converse with him.

A few years after the lectures at Mieza, Hephaestion’s presence was notably absent when several of Alexander’s close friends were exiled as a result of the Pixodarus affair. Among those exiled by Philip II after Alexander’s failed attempt to offer himself as groom to the Carian princess were Ptolemy, Nearchus, Harpalus, Erigyius, and Laomedon. The reason for Hephaestion’s absence from this list could be due to the fact that all of the exiled men were older friends of Alexander, Erigyius himself roughly 24 years older than the prince. Hephaestion was a contemporary of Alexander and it is likely that his influence might have been seen as less of a threat than these more mature companions. Whatever Hephaestion’s opinion had been on the whole affair, like many of Alexander’s other childhood companions he was not exiled in its aftermath.

While it is true that very little detail of Hephaestion’s childhood and education can be found, that which remains gives credence to what is known about his later life. His friendship with Alexander was long lasting, as was his tenure in the court at Pella; he even shared the same education as the future Great King of Greece and Asia. With such a promising start, age and experience would have helped mould Hephaestion Amyntoros into the man who would one day be the second most powerful man in Alexander’s empire; second only to the king himself.