The “heated rivalries” of Alexander the Great’s FAMILY VALUES

Alexander and the cast of characters in his life have stirred the imaginations of artists throughout history and the world. Here John Steell’s “Alexander & Bucephalus” (1883, bronze), which stands outside Edinburgh’s City Chambers in Scotland, crystallizes the story of the preteen Alexander taming the rearing Bucephalus by recognizing the horse was afraid of his shadow and turning him so he couldn’t see it. | Photograph by Stefan Schäfer, Lich.

He’s the subject of Netflix series, business articles, West Point courses and biographies that mull just how “great” he really was.

What is undoubtedly true is that Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) – the Greco-Macedonian king whose lead-from-the-front conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. spurred the dissemination of Greek culture – helped shape the world we live in. But what today’s audience seems to find most resonant is a juicy backstory that’s part “Succession,” part “Heated Rivalry” and part ancient Greek tragedy.

Small wonder, then, that Netflix is streaming its 2024 docudrama “Alexander: The Making of a God,” while “Heated Rivalry” creator Jacob Tierney has turned his attention to an upcoming Netflix series, “Alexander.” Based on Annabel Lyon’s novel “The Golden Mean,” it will explore the teenage Alexander’s relationship withhis tutor Aristotle, the philosopher who encouraged his pursuit of the Homeric ideal of arête, or excellence. (That relationship is also the subject of “Aristotle/Alexander,” a play written and directed by Alex Lyras that had its world premiere in March in Los Angeles.)

It’s one of many fascinating, oft-considered threads in a narrative that began around July 20, 353 B.C. when Alexander was born in Pella, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedon (now part of northern Greece), to King Philip II and his chief wife and queen, Olympias. Alexander’s parentage would contribute not only to his complex personality — at once ardently romantic and brutally realistic — but his equally multilayered approach to personal relationships, marriage and sex. His father was a skilled commander and diplomat who like the later Henry VIII would marry much but none too well. His mother was a fair beauty with dynastic ambitions of her own and a vengeful attitude toward betrayal. Think Princess Diana crossed with Medea.

A head of Alexander the Great (third century B.C., marble) from Alexandria, Egypt, one of the many cities he founded. Every ancient portrait of Alexander captures the melting gaze, tilt of the head and leonine mane thanks to a carefully controlled image designed to signal power. | Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Alexander — Philip’s oldest, legitimate, able-bodied son — would be the battlefield on which his parents played out their increasingly troubled relationship, his mother filling his head with notions of Zeus, the Greeks’ chief god, being his real father; his actual father implying he was a mama’s boy not quite up to the task of heir.

The preteen Alexander earned his father’s respect by taming a superb but ornery horse that would become his trusty steed Bucephalus. At 18, he was commanding his father’s elite cavalry.

But the relationship soured as Philip divorced Olympias for a younger wife, potentially disenfranchising mother and son. The inflection point came at the wedding of Alexander’s sister Cleopatra, where Philip was stabbed to death by a former male lover. Historians today, however, have little doubt that Olympias was the assassination’s true architect.

At age 20, Alexander became king of Macedon, hegemonof the Greek city-states and heir to his father’s ambition to conquer the Persian Empire. He would do all that and more — creating a new empire spanning 22,000 miles from the Balkans to northern India and spreading the Greek language and culture that would later facilitate the growth of the Roman Empire as well as Christianity — all on his way to becoming the greatest military commander to date. Yet he would never escape the exacting parentage that had in a sense been the making of him.

Was that brambled parentage, along with his own controlling nature, the reason Alexander resisted his parents’ efforts to interest him in the opposite sex? Or was there something — someone — else?

In his youth, Alexander befriended Hephaestion, one of the noble companions with whom he was raised. Did they become lovers? The ancient Greeks had an educational practice by which a young man would take up with a slightly youngerone on his way to marriage. (What made Alexander and Hephaestion’s relationship different was that they were the same age.)

Alexander would marry several princesses, including Roxane, a fierce beauty not unlike his mother, who would become his chief wife and mother of his heir, Alexander IV; take a mistress and form an attachment with the Persian eunuch Bagoas. Not bad for a guy who said sex and sleep reminded him of death.

A Roman medallion of Olympias, Alexander’s mother (220-250). Her origin story as a beautiful, virginal, orphaned princess belied a steely nature characterized by dynastic ambitions and a vengeful streak. Courtesy Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (the northern Greek city named for one of Alexander’s younger sisters).

Was Alexander bisexual then? The ancient Greeks hadno concept for a term that, like homosexuality, would notbe described until the 19th century. What we can say is that Alexander and Hephaestion, who fancied themselves like Achilles and Patroclus in Homer’s “The Iliad,” were soulmates — a point underscored when the abandoned Persian royal family mistook Hephaistion for Alexander, he being reportedly the taller and handsomer of the two. Alexander dismissed the faux pas by saying, “He, too, is Alexander.” It’s a story not unlike the moment in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” in which Cathy declares, “I am Heathcliff.”

Hephaestion died of natural causes in October 324 B.C. and though Alexander was devastated, he fought on, with plans to conquer India, Arabia, North Africa and Italy, until he, too, was felled, probably by malaria, in Babylon around June 10, 323 B.C.

For Alexander, who was said to have an ineffable pothos, or longing, there was only ever the next conquest, the next exploration, the next adventure, the next horizon.

The writer is also the author of “Daimon: A Novel of Alexander the Great” (JMS Books).

In one of the most poignant stories from the life of Alexander the Great, the family of the defeated Persian Emperor Darius III gets off on the wrong foot by kneeling in homageto Hephaestion, Alexander’s soulmate and right-hand man — a diplomatic faux pas that Alexander dismissed by saying “He, too, is Alexander.” Paolo Veronese’s “The Family of Darius Before Alexander” (1565-70) adds to the confusion, with art historians arguing over whether the gesturing figure in red is Alexander or Hephaestion.