Hephaestion

an enormously complicated and sort of entangled collection of lovers and sexual partners and friends.

Most notably, someone called Hephaestion, who he grew up with and who was his oldest friend.

Ancient historians called him Alexander's secret keeper, who Alexander trusted above all others.

But Alexander seems to have had this

He would have to take a decent-sized force of men, nothing too crazy, and attack the Greeks when they began their initial work on constructing the bridge.

Alexander understood this, because he was a sick guy, so he took 16,000 men, which included three companion cavalry divisions, commanded by Hephaestion, Perdicas, and Dimitrios.

The royal Hippaspist... two battalions of the phalanx commanded by Kynos and Cletus the White, archers, agrianes, cavalry from Bactrians and Turkestan, and a special force of Scythian horse archers.

And he took them to the point where they were going to cross.

In the schoolyard, Alexander was not alone.

Other boys studied with him Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Cassander, Lysimachus, all names that would later resurface as generals, kings, and power brokers in the empire.

The bonds forged at Mieza were more than just classmates.

They were lifelines.

These boys hunted together, debated fiercely, and ate from the same bowls.

Imagine a group of teenagers joking, sparring, and occasionally pranking one another, except this group would later carve up the known world.

Alexander himself grew especially close to Hephaestion, who became his lifelong companion and perhaps his truest friend.

If Alexander was Achilles, Hephaestion was his Patroclus.

As he was riding hastily thither, he suddenly met the flying squadrons of Persians and Indians who had been driven out of the camp by the reserves and were now in full retreat.

A furious combat ensued and only a handful succeeded in cutting their way out, while sixty of the Macedonians were slain and Hephaestion and two other generals fell wounded.

When the king at last reached the scene of fighting on the left, the battle was practically over.

The gallant efforts of the Thessalian horse having extricated Parmenion from his danger.

At Alexandria he appointed a new governor, and added some fresh colonists from the less robust of his soldiers, and then marched onwards to Nicaea, either a town lying between Alexandria and Ordospana, Kabul, or a new name given on this occasion to Ordospana itself.

Then he turned his face eastwards to pass the grim defiles where a British army was destroyed in 1842.

But he met with no opposition which the historians think worthy of notice, and presently dividing his forces, he sent Hephaestion and Perdiccas with a strong division down the valley of the Kofan to its junction with the Indus at Atak, the Forbidden, to the west of which no Hindu may pass without losing caste, with orders to prepare materials for a bridge, while he himself struck northeast into the mountains, partly to reduce the mountain tribes, and partly because supplies were reported as more abundant in that district.

It was several months before the king rejoined Hephaestion's corps, and a detailed record of those months would be but a record of marches, sieges, and skirmishes, without a single reverse, and of endless booty and prisoners.

But Herbert Spencer tells us in two places that the Creeks attach the idea of a ceremonial observance to the custom.

He says that the warriors have a ceremony of scratching each other as a sign of friendship.

And again, scratching is practiced among young warriors as a ceremony or token of friendship.

When they have exchanged promises of inviolable attachment, they proceed to scratch each other before they part.

Dr. J. Hampton Porter remarks that this ceremonial scratching may be a survival of the blood covenant, and that in earlier times the young warriors instead of merely scratching each other's arms may have cut the flesh and exchanged the blood.

What follows in this chapter was not learned in an hour or a day, but after a long course of examination and a comparison of statements extracted from different authorities.

The bags spoken of revealed, when opened, a quantity of yellow-colored flour or powder, resembling cornmeal, to which the Apache gave the name of Hodenthen or Hadenthen, the meaning of which word is the powder or pollen of the tuli, a variety of the cattail rush growing in all the little ponds and cienegas of the southwest.

I made it the touchstone of friendship that every scout or other Apache who wished for a favor at my hands should relate something concerning his religious belief.

Whereupon Anaxarchus the sophist who was present said to Alexander, Couldst thou, the son of Zeus, thunder like that? At this Alexander laughed and said, Nay, I do not wish to cause fear in my friends, as thou wouldst have me do, thou who despisest my suppers because, as thou sayest, thou seest the tables furnished with fish and not with satraps' heads.

For in fact we are told that Anaxarchus, on seeing a presentation of small fish which the king had sent to Hephaestion, had uttered the speech above mentioned, as though he were disparaging and ridiculing those who undergo great toils and dangers in the pursuit of eminence and power, since in the way of enjoyments and pleasures they have little or nothing more than other men.

From what has been said, then, it is clear that Alexander himself was not foolishly affected or puffed up by the belief in his divinity, but used it for the subjugation of others.

When he had returned from Egypt into Phoenicia, footnote early in three thirty-one BC, end footnote, he honoured the gods with sacrifices and solemn processions, and held contests of dithrambic choruses and tragedies which were made brilliant, not only by their furnishings, but also by the competitors who exhibited them.

What lofty airs his friends and bodyguards were wont to display over the wealth bestowed by him is plain from a letter which Olympias wrote to him.

She says, "I beg thee to find other ways of conferring favors on those thou lovest and holdest in honor.

As it is, thou makest them all the equals of kings and providest them with an abundance of friends, whilst thyself thou strippest bare." Olympias often wrote to him in like vein, but Alexander kept her writings secret, except once when Hephaestion, as was his wont, read with him a letter which had been opened.

The king did not prevent him, but took the ring from his own finger and applied its seal to the lips of Hephaestion.

Yeah, this is my weak spot here.

Um, yeah, what's another king that's hard to spell? Hephaestion or something? No.

Hephaestus?

Hephaestus.