imagine talking about alexander the great and not mentioning that he died of grief only 8 months after hephaestion died, that he petitioned the oracle to give hephaestion literal divine status so that people could worship him as a god, that he threw himself on hephaestion’s dead body and refused to leave for two days, that he put together the biggest funeral procession known to the world at the time, that he gave hephaestion a lock of his own hair at the funeral in blatant reference to achilles doing the same with patroclus….like heteronormativity is so wild that he could come back from the dead and come out to every historian personally and it still wouldn’t be enough to render him anything but straight
Reading the iliad is so crazy because like alexander the great was reading this story over 2000 years ago?? he probably wrote fanfiction about achilles and patroclus and told hephaestion his headcanons?? life is absurd
HE DID THO. HE ACTUALLY DID.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT WAS HELLA GAY AND WROTE GAY FANFICTION OF THE GAYEST PEOPLE IN ANCIENT GREECE.
I’m not even kidding. Achilles and Patriclus were hella gay Ancient Greek warriors; like the Illiad (the number one source for all things Greek) has half the book dedicated to their relationship.
Alexander the Great wrote 57 papers about them. HE WROTE 57 ESSAYS ON THEIR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER AND WHAT HE THOUGHT THEY WOULD DO IF THEY LIVED IN HIS TIME PERIOD.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT WROTE MODERN AU GAY FANFICTION
And it gets EVEN GAYER
He constantly refers to himself and his “guy pal” Hephaestion as having the same relationship as Achilles and Patroclus
He literally talks about how he and his best friend were like WELL
KNOWN ANCIENT LOVERS.Don’t think it can get gayer?
THINK AGAINAlexander and Hephaestion visit the graves of Achilles and Patroclus and laid down flowers in honor for them, stripped naked, and ran a race in their honor. After words they SENT THEIR SERVANT AWAY TO SPEND THE NIGHT ALONE AT THE MEMORIAL.
This isn’t a myth, this is actual documented history. It’s all true. I don’t have sources because I learned about this a few years ago in my history class in college but google it I promise you.
Wow, 57 essays. Alexander must have had a lot of free time on his hands.
The reason you don’t have sources is that this didn’t happen.
I TOOK 15 MINUTES
Cartledge, Paul. Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past. Woodstock, NY; New York: The Overlook Press, 2004
Wilcken, Ulrich, Alexander the Great, W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition (March 1997)
The relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion may well have been sexual. Between young men such a relationship carried no social stigma. At the time, such a relationship was encouraged between warriors. The Spartans, for example, were said to place lovers together in the line of battle on the basis that they would not only fight for Sparta, but also for their partner. It is certainly true that Alexander saw in his relationship with Hephaestion a reflection of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as told by Homer in the Illiad.
Alexander the Great by Nick McCarty (via historyismyboyfriend)