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Hephaestion
(ca. 357 - 324 BC) Macedonia

Hephaestion

Cavalry commander

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Hephaestion was the lover of his boyhood friend, Alexander, for about 19 years. Both brilliant boys, they were tutored by Aristotle, with whom Hephaestion kept up a lifelong correspondence. Hephaestion and Alexander felt like the two heroes Achilles and Patroclus, from The Iliad, which was Alexander's favorite book. You could say the two were technically "bisexuals" by today's terms - they produced children, yet they picked it so that their progeny would necessarily be cousins.

Hephaestion started off as a regular cavalry soldier - Alexander did not play favorites - and rose through the ranks on merit and carried out the most important military and administrative assignments. Later, Alexander married married the defeated Persian king's daughter, a purely political marriage, and Hephaestion married her sister, since he and Alexander wanted their children to be cousins.

After they conquered Asia, Hephaestion died suddenly of typhus. Alexander's grief was monumental. He asked the oracles if Hephaestion was a god (back then people could become gods by achievement) and was told that Hephaestion was indeed a hero, a lesser type of god. Now Alexander, who had no doubt about his own divinity, knew that he would meet his beloved again in the Blessed Realm, where gods and heroes live.

When Hephaestion died, a grief-stricken Alexander gave him what may well be the most spectacular funeral in all history:

"Alexander the Great had the body of his dead lover, Hephaestion, burned atop an awesome 200-foot pyre, erected at a cost of over 10,000 talents, equivalent to roughly $60 million today. The pyre, which took months to complete, contained tiers of sculpted ships, centaurs, bulls, sirens, lions, and wreaths, all in combustible softwood."

Alexander died eight months after Hephaestion's death, just as Achilles had followed Patroclus in the Iliad.

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