Fire From Heaven (52 page)

His emotional commitment to Hephaistion is among the most certain facts of his life. He displayed an open pride in it. At Troy, in the presence of his army, they honoured together the tombs of Achilles and Patroklos. Though Homer does not say the heroes were more than friends, it was widely believed in Alexander’s day; had he thought the imputation disgraceful, he would not so have courted it. After his victory at Issus, when the captive women of Darius’ family were bewailing their lord for dead, Alexander went to their tent to reassure them, taking Hephaistion along. According to Curtius, they walked in together, dressed much alike; Hephaistion was taller and by Persian standards more impressive; the Queen Mother prostrated herself before him. Warned of her error by the frantic signals of her attendants, she turned in distressed confusion to the real King, who said to her, ‘You weren’t far out, Mother; he is Alexander, too.’.

It is clear they behaved with seemliness in public (though high-ranking officials resented Hephaistion’s being seen to read, without rebuke, Olympias’ letters over Alexander’s shoulder). No physical relationship is proved, and those whom the thought disturbs are free to reject it. It is a recorded saying of Alexander’s that sleep and sex put him in mind of his mortality.

Alexander survived his friend by about three months, for two of which he was travelling with the body from Ecbatana to Babylon, the intended capital of his empire. The wild extravagance of the funeral rites, the vast grandiose pyre, the request to Zeus Ammon’s oracle to grant the dead man the divine status already accorded to Alexander himself (Ammon allowed Hephaistion only to be a hero), suggest that at this time Alexander was barely in command of his reason. Not long after, he contracted fever, but sat up all night at a party. Though he pushed on with his campaign plans as long as he could stand, indeed much longer, he is not recorded to have had a doctor.Ê (He had hanged Hephaistion’s, for neglect.) His stubborn mistreatment of/his own condition seems self-destructive, whether consciously or not.

His experience at the Aigai Dionysia is invented, but expresses, I think, a psychological truth. Olympias committed many murders; her eventual execution was entrusted by Kassandros to the relatives of her victims. She killed Eurydike and her infant the moment Alexander’s back was turned after Philip’s death. Her complicity in the latter has been much suspected, but never proved. The prophetic ‘vision’ of Demosthenes is historical.

The general reader who wants to follow Alexander’s career as King will find it in Plutarch’s Lives (Volume II in the Everyman Edition), or in Arrian’s History (Penguin Classics). Both are available in English interleaved with Greek, in the Loeb Classical Library.

Proper Names

Alexander’s real name was, of course, Alexandros; it was so common in North Greece that three other bearers of it appear within this tale alone. Because of this, and because of two-thousand-year-long associations, I have given him the traditional Latinized form.

I have kept traditional forms, too, for some other very familiar names: Philip for Philippos, Ptolemy for Ptolemaios, Aristotle for Aristoteles; and for a number of place names. The word Bucephalus, however, comes trailing such clouds of nineteenth-century cliche that I have preferred to translate it: Boukephalas would be the Doric-Macedonian form. In the story of Alexander, no system of nomenclature is likely to please everyone; so, with apology, I have pleased myself.

I have used the name of Eurydike for Philip’s bride, though it was a royal honorific bestowed by him, rather than her given name of Kleopatra, to avoid confusion with Alexander’s sister.

About The Author

Mary Renault was educated at Clifton High School, Bristol and St Hugh’s College, Oxf?ord. Having completed her nursing training in 1937, she returned to nursing in 1939 until the end of the war. In 1948 she went to live in South Africa. Her other publications are: Purposes of Love, Kind are her Answers, The Friendly Young Ladies, Return to Night, North Face, The Charioteer, The Last of the ‘Wine, The King Must Die, The Bull from the Sea (Penguin 1973), The Lion in the Gateway (for children), The Mask of Apollo, and The Persian Boy (Penguin 1974). Fire From Heaven received the Silver Pen Award in 1971. Her latest books are The Nature of Alexander and The Praise-Singer. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1959.

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