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University of Nebraska at Omaha

History Faculty Publications

Hephaistion Amyntoros

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Mourning Of Alexander The Great, Jeanne Reames Jan 2001

The Mourning Of Alexander The Great, Jeanne Reames

History Faculty Publications

To say that Hephaistion's death devastated the conqueror merely repeats a commonplace. But was Alexander's subsequent bereavement excessive, or-to use clinical terms-pathological?l Pervading popular opinion has been a guarded (or not-so-guarded) "yes." Nonetheless, I propose to argue that a number of actions heretofore seen as abnormal are in fact behaviors typical of the bereaved. The difference in Alexander's case was due to his wealth and his authority: he could both afford such gestures and have them enforced.


An Atypical Affair? Alexander The Great, Hephaistion Amyntoros And The Nature Of Their Relationship, Jeanne Reames Jan 1999

An Atypical Affair? Alexander The Great, Hephaistion Amyntoros And The Nature Of Their Relationship, Jeanne Reames

History Faculty Publications

Most recent Alexander historians - especially those writing after Stonewall - assume that the friendship of Alexander the Great and Hephaistion Amyntoros was not purely platonic.2 Despite this, the names of Alexander and Hephaistion rarely find their way into modem lists of ancient lovers, nor are they much mentioned in studies of Greek homoeroticism3 - perhaps because they fail to fit the model first detailed by K.J. Dover in 1978. This dichotomy is a curiosity of recent specialization in classics. Alexander historians assume the affair while historians of Greek sexuality ignore it. In any case, the matter of …