From Mary Renault’s “The Nature of Alexander”:
He (Hephaestion) is described by Curtius as being taller than Alexander, and better looking, in which case he was certainly handsome. No historian states plainly whether they were physically lovers; but Plutarch says that on the site of Troy, Alexander laid a wreath on Achilles’ tomb, and Hephaestion on Patroclus’. In spite of Homer’s reticence, classical Greece assumed the heroes’ love to be sexual. It would be characteristic of Alexander’s passion for personal loyalties to make so public an avowal. Olympias, at any rate, was wildly jealous of their attachment and railed by letter at Hephaestion half across Asia. A fragmentary retort of his survived: “Stop quarrelling with me; not that in any case I shall much care. You know Alexander means more to me than anyone.”
And this regarding the famous faux pas of the Persian Queen Mother, Sisygambis, gives us another insight into Hephaestion‘s handsome, noble bearing:
Arrian admits that the event has accumulated legend. He, Curtius and Plutarch vary only slightly, and all to the same effect. Alexander brought Hephaestion with him. They walked in together, both simply dressed. Hephaestion’s looks and presence first struck the women, used to associate height with royalty, and the venerable Sisygambis began to prostrate herself before him (Hephaestion). He drew back; the harem eunuchs made warning signs; in distress she began again with the King (Alexander). He (Alexander) stepped forward and raised her up. “Never mind, Mother. You made no mistake, he too is Alexander.” Mystifying as this may have seemed when passed through an interpreter, she thanked him with regal dignity.
And this description of Alexander is quite striking:
Alexander’s reign began in 336BC. He was little over twenty.
“His physical looks are best portrayed in the statues Lysippus made of him. (Plutarch does not divulge which of Alexander’s own contemporaries, if any, expressed this view.) And he approved being sculpted by him alone. (But he must have licensed a number of others.) For this artist has caught exactly those idiosyncrasies which many of his successors and friends later tried to imitate - the pose of his neck, tilted a little leftward, and his liquid eyes. Apelles’ painting, ‘The Thunder-Wielder,’ did not get his complexion right, but made it too dark and tanned; for he was blond, they say, shading to ruddy on the breast and face.”
His liquid eyes were grey. Their expressiveness altered Greek artistic convention. All important portrait heads feature a heavy bulge of the forehead above the brows (allowing for idealization, probably even more marked in life), caused perhaps by the development of the frontal lobes of the brain; and the loosely waving, heavy mane of hair, springing from the peak, its individual cut sloped down to the base of the neck when in south Greece the short curly crop was in fashion. Arrian, both of whose main sources were men who saw him often, says that he was very handsome.
In Aristoxenus’ memoir it is said that a very pleasant scent came from his skin, and that there was a fragrance in his breath and all his body which permeated the clothes he wore.
LOL
Kerry
