#ernst badian

[jeannereames]

I see you talk a lot about historiography! What would you consider the most important development of Alexander’s historiography?

What the Hell is Historiography? (And why you should care)

This question and the next one in the queue are both going to be fun for me. 😊

First, some quick definitions for those who are new to me and/or new to reading history:

Historiography = “the history of the histories” (E.g., examination of the sources themselves rather than the subject of them…a topic that typically incites yawns among undergrads but really fires up the rest of us, ha.)

primary sources = the evidence itself—can be texts, art, records, or material evidence. For ancient history, this specifically means the evidence from the time being studied.

secondary sources = writings by historians using the primary evidence, whether meant for a “regular” audience (non-specialists) or academic discussions with citations, footnotes, and bibliography (sometimes referred to as “full scholarly apparatus”).

For ancient history, we also sometimes get a weird middle category…they’re not modern sources but also not from the time under discussion, might even be from centuries after the fact. Consider the medieval Byzantine “encyclopedia” called the Suda (sometimes Suidas), which contains information from now lost ancient sources, finalized c. 900s CE. To give a comparison, imagine some historian a thousand years from now studying Geoffry Chaucer from the 1300s, using an entry about him in some kid’s 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that contains information that had been lost by his day.

This middle category is especially important for Alexander, since even our primary sources all date hundreds of years after his death. Yes, those writers had access to contemporary accounts, but they didn’t just “cut-and-paste.” They editorialized and selected from an array of accounts. Worse, they rarely tell us who they used. FIVE surviving primary Alexander histories remain, but he’s mentioned in a wide (and I do mean wide) array of other surviving texts. Alas this represents maybe a quarter of what was actually written about him in antiquity.

OKAY, so …

The most important historiographic changes in Alexander studies!

I’m going to pick three, or really two-and-a-half, as the last is an extension of the second.

FIRST …decentering Arrian as the “good” source as opposed to the so-called “vulgate” of Diodoros-Curtius-Justin as “bad” sources.

Many earlier Alexander historians (with a few important exceptions [Fritz Schachermeyr]) considered Arrian to be trustworthy, Plutarch moderately trustworthy if short, and the rest varying degrees of junk. W. W. Tarn was especially guilty of this. The prevalence of his view over Schachermeyr’s more negative one owed to his popularity/ease of reading, and the fact he wrote on Alexander for volume 6 of the first edition (1927) of the Cambridge Ancient History, later republished in two volumes with additions (largely in vol. 2) in 1948 and 1956. Thus, and despite being a lawyer (barrister) not a professional historian, his view dominated Alexander studies in the first half of the 20th century (Burn, Rose, etc.)…and even after. Both Mary Renault and Robin Lane Fox (neither of whom were/are professional historians either), as well as N. G. L. Hammond (with qualifications), show Tarn’s more romantic impact well into the middle of the second half of the 20th century. But you could find it in high school and college textbooks into the 1980s.

The first really big shift (especially in English) came with a pair of articles in 1958 by Ernst Badian: “The Eunuch Bagoas,” Classical Quarterly 8, and “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7. Both demolished Tarn’s historiography. I’ve talked about especially the first before, but it really WAS that monumental, and ushered in a more source-critical approach to Alexander studies. This also happened to coincide with a shift to a more negative portrait of the conqueror in work from the aforementioned Schachermeyr (reissuing his earlier biography in 1973 as Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichtenkeit und seines Wirkens) to Peter Green’s original Alexander of Macedon from Thames and Hudson in 1974, reissued in 1991 from Univ. of California-Berkeley. J. R. Hamilton’s 1973 Alexander the Great wasn’t as hostile, but A. B. Bosworth’s 1988 Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great turned back towards a more negative, or at least ambivalent portrait, and his Alexander in the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (1996) was highly critical. I note the latter two as Bosworth wrote the section on Alexander for the much-revised Cambridge Ancient History vol. 6, 1994, which really demonstrates how the narrative on Alexander had changed.

All this led to an unfortunate kick-back among Alexander fans who wanted their hero Alexander. They clung/still cling to Arrian (and Plutarch) as “good,” and the rest as varying degrees of bad. Some prefer Tarn’s view of the mighty conqueror/World unifier/Brotherhood-of-Mankind proponent, including that He Absolutely Could Not Have Been Queer. Conversely, others are all over the romance of him and Hephaistion, or Bagoas (often owing to Renault or Renault-via-Oliver Stone), but still like the squeaky-nice-chivalrous Alexander of Plutarch and Arrian.

They are very much still around. Quite a few of the former group freaked out over the recent Netflix thing, trotting out Plutarch (and Arrian) to Prove He Wasn’t Queer, and dismissing anything in, say, Curtius or Diodoros as “junk” history. But I also run into it on the other side, with those who get really caught up in all the romance and can’t stand the idea of a vicious Alexander.

It's not necessary to agree with Badian’s (or Green’s or Schachermeyr’s) highly negative Alexander to recognize the importance of looking at all the sources more carefully. Justin is unusually problematic, but each of the other four had a method, and a rationale. And weaknesses. Yes, even Arrian. Arrian clearly trusted Ptolemy to a degree Curtius didn’t. For both of them, it centered on the fact he was a king. I’m going to go with Curtius on this one, frankly.

Alexander is one of the most malleable famous figures in history. He’s portrayed more ways than you can shake a stick at—positive, negative, in-between—and used for political and moral messaging from even before his death in Babylon right up to modern Tik-Tok vids.

He might have been annoyed that Julius Caesar is better known than he is, in the West, but hands-down, he’s better known worldwide thanks to the Alexander Romance in its many permutations. And he, more than Caesar, gets replicated in other semi-mythical heroes. (Arthur, anybody?)

Alfred Heuss referred to him as a wineskin (or bottle)—schlauch, in German—into which subsequent generations poured their own ideas. (“Alexander  der  Große  und  die politische Ideologie  des Altertums,” Antike und Abendland 4, 1954.) If that might be overstating it a bit, he’s not wrong.

Who Alexander was thus depends heavily on who was (and is) writing about him.

And that’s why nuanced historiography with regard to the Alexander sources is so important. It’s also why there will never be a pop presentation that doesn’t infuriate at least a portion of his fanbase. That fanbase can’t agree on who he was because the sources that tell them about him couldn’t agree either.

SECOND …scholarship has moved away from an attempt to find the “real” Alexander towards understanding the stories inside our surviving histories and their themes. A biography of Alexander is next to impossible (although it doesn’t stop most of us from trying, ha). It’s more like a “search” for Alexander, and any decent history of his career will begin with the sources. And their problems.

This also extends to events. I find myself falling in the middle between some of my colleagues who genuinely believe we can get back to “what happened,” and those who sorta throw up their hands and settle on “what story the sources are telling us, and why.” Classic Libra. 😉

As frustrating as it may sound, I’m afraid “it depends” is the order of the day, or of the instance, at least. Some things are easier to get back to than others, and we must be ready to acknowledge that even things reported in several sources may not have happened at all. Or at least, were quite radically different from how it was later reported. (Thinking of proskynesis here.) Sometimes our sources are simply irreconcilable…and we should let them be. (Thinking of the Battle of Granikos here.)

THIRD/SECOND-AND-A-HALF …a growing awareness of just how much Roman-era attitudes overlay and muddy our sources, even those writing in Greek. It would be SO nice to have just one Hellenistic-era history. I’d even take Kleitarchos! But I’d love Marsyas, or Ptolemy. Why? Both were Macedonians. Even our surviving philhellenic authors such as Plutarch impose Greek readings and morals on Macedonian society.

So, let’s add Roman views on top of Greek views on top of Macedonian realities in a period of extremely fast mutation (Philip and Alexander both). What a muddle! In fact, one of the real advantages of a source such as Curtius is that his sources seem to have known a thing or three about both Achaemenid Persia and also Macedonian custom. He sometimes says something like, “Macedonian custom was….” We don’t know if he’s right, but it’s not something we find much in other histories—even Arrian who used Ptolemy. (Curtius may also have used Ptolemy, btw.)

In any case, as a result of more care given to the themes of the historians, a growing sensitivity to Roman milieu for all of them has altered our perceptions of our sources.

These are, to me, the major and most significant shifts in Alexander historiography from the late 1800s to the early 2100s.

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

If some mistakes had not been made, and if the luck of the game had been different, the res publica could have been saved at Caesar's time, and quite possibly for a long time. We might have had scholars telling us today that the structure of the res publica, or mere fate, made it impossible for monarchy to be installed at Rome, however hard men like Caesar, who with all their genius did not see this, tried to do so.

Ernst Badian, critiquing Christian Meier's Caesar for its assumption that the republic was doomed, in 1990.

[hetairoi]

"After fighting, scheming and murdering in pursuit of the secure tenure of absolute power, [Alexander] found himself at last on a lonely pinnacle over and abyss..."

Ernst Badian, 'Alexander the Great and the loneliness of power', 1962.

Unintended inspo under the cut

[rhianna]

Ernst Badian Collection of Roman Republican Coins 

http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/projects/romancoins/index.shtml

Coins in the collection also document the political aspects of striking coins unique to Rome. Young politicians served as official moneyers (tresviri monetales). They put their names on coins and selected motifs that conveyed messages about their families’ histories and the virtues they claimed these had. The most common message was the importance of military virtues. Patriotic images like the helmeted head of Rome and the she wolf appear together with images of deities. Reflecting affairs in Italy and beyond, changes in money weights and the addition of victory motifs show the fortunes of a rising empire.

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic still remains to be written, by a sensible and well-informed historian with no other purpose in mind. Most of us can only follow one or two threads of the web, which is reasonable and useful, provided we do not claim to have found "the answer."

Ernst Badian

[jeannereames]

Hi Jeanne I'm Elena of @alessandroiiidimacedonia

I'd like to know if there is a term that indicates all the literary production about Alexander the Great, of any genre fiction and non-fiction, poetry or not, which see it positively and also negatively, by ancient and modern authors, contemporaries and later.

Thank you,

Elena

Hi, Elena!

Ernst Badian dubbed us "Macedoniasts" some decades ago, ha.

I like that term, as it's inclusive of the study not just of ATG, but also of Philip, the kings before them, the Macedonian people and culture, and also of the Hellenistic era that followed.

So we (professional, semi-professional, or amateur) are all Macedoniasts.

Welcome to the club. ;)

[jeannereames]

weird question but what do you think Alexander would’ve thought of Machiavellian philosophy toward ruling? i feel like he employed some aspects of it throughout his life / career

A Machiavellian Alexander?

Because he didn’t write anything on the topic (that survives), it’s hard to know what Alexander’s theories on kingship/rule were, although I suspect he had theories, having been a student of Aristotle. Yet if some of the anecdotes about his days as a student can be believed, he resisted letting theory eat pragmatics—frustrating his teacher. (Although his teacher was more pragmatic than his teacher, Plato.) He purported to believe in what we might call “situational decision making.” As his time as the buck-stops person increased, he grew even more creative and less wedded to theoretical scaffolding. There was a lot of throwing ideas against a wall to see what stuck.

Although The Prince is Machiavelli’s best-known work, it’s actually atypical of his other writings. Dedicated to Lorenzo de’Medici, it was intended to teach rulers how to maintain power successfully. As such, it’s amoral (rather than immoral). A practical guide that divorced philosophic ethics from political theory. (To what degree he really believed it himself is, I understand, a point of contention.)

The Prince is the opposite of Plato—or Aristotle, for that matter. Rulers had been utilizing many of the ideas Machiavelli suggested, but nobody writing about politics advised them. Philosophers and political theorists had been trying to teach kings, tyrants, emperors, and other rulers to exercise power in moral ways, not amoral ones: Neo-Pythagorean idealized societies or Plato and his “philosopher king.” Stoics later went in one direction, Epicureans in another, and Neoplatonists in yet another, etc. That pattern would continue down into the medieval world. Until Machiavelli. (And even after him.)

To theorists, politics should be bound up with ethical thinking in order to create the best, most just society.

That’s the tradition Alexander was raised in, so I think he’d have been somewhere between offended and impressed by The Prince. He’d recognize the soundness of the advice, while being astonished anybody would set it down AS advice to be followed. I think he’d regard it as “last-ditch policy,” certainly when younger. Age and experience sanded down the idealism, but I don’t think it ever entirely sanded it off.

It’s hard to know just how devoted to philosophy Alexader actually was. This owes to the narrative programs inserted by later writers. For instance, Plutarch wanted to portray him as a “philosopher in armor.” I think most serious Alexander scholars these days dismiss that as a fictional portrait that served Plutarch’s moralizing and elevation of Hellenic culture during the Roman imperial period. But how much did the historical Alexander pursue philosophy? And did he do so for personal reasons (preference), or as a “show” to impress the Greeks (and is that division an artificial one, in itself)?

Some scholars, including Ernst Badian, Ian Worthington, and Peter Green would, I believe argue that he was pragmatic with little patience for philosophy unless it served his purposes: e.g., very The Prince-like. Others, including N.G.L. Hammond and Robin Lane Fox would rather see him in more Plutarchian terms. Yet others, such as Sabine Müller and Yossi Roismann, would regard him as a gifted statesman and diplomat, but not somebody marching around with his head in the clouds. I probably come closer to that latter view.

Yet I do think we need to take more seriously than we sometimes do the fact that he was Aristotle’s student. If he did not adopt some of Aristotle’s specific views on, say, non-Greeks, he would still have been a different sort of (Macedonian) king as a result of his education, probably more inclined to think about what he was doing in terms of political theory. If you wanted to put it in modern terms, we might regard him as a “first-generation college student.” Ha. And an enthusiastic one, not simply someone there to get a degree in pursuit of a higher-paying job. By all accounts, he appears to have been a deep-thinker—as was his father, albeit without the formal training. Philip worked out a lot of things about successful rule on his own…then made sure his son was given the proper educational scaffolding to make him even better at it.

So, while we may not have a good idea of Alexander’s personal political philosophies, and if—as he aged—he appears to have grown more cynical, I think it would be a mistake to see him as intentionally amoral in approach. He wanted to be, and saw himself as, a “good” (i.e., just) king. When he did “bad” (immoral or cruel) things, he would have blamed situational necessity.

In that, he’s like most people. By-in-large, when the average person behaves badly, they don’t see themselves as “bad” people, but as people who want to be good stuck between a rock and a hard place. “The devil/[circumstance] made me do it.” Alexander was no different.

[jeannereames]

Good morning Dr. Reames I wanted to ask you, what do you think that Christian Cameron compared Alexandros with Hitler, do you think it is a fair comparison? That is, there will be traits that all leaders must share to motivate a large number of people to follow them and come to power, but is it really true that Alexandros was the Hitler of his time?

First, let me say that Chris Cameron and I share some mutual author friends, so I know him “adjacent,” but we have never had a conversation. Let me also say that while I’m not a fan of his God of War novel about Alexander, I assume he’d equally dislike Dancing with the Lion (assuming he’s even read it). Authors are allowed to have different visions.

So, that stated, I had some pretty serious issues with God of War (GoW), in terms of both his reading of Alexander as well as his historiography. In GoW, he Mary-Sued Ptolemy at the expense of Alexander (and Hephaistion and Olympias, for that matter). Compare his “can do no wrong” Ptolemy (which seems to swallow Arrian’s history whole-hog) with Kate Elliott’s Persephone/Ptolemy in the Sun Chronicles…a much more nuanced portrayal, where—surprise!—Persephone/Ptolemy *lies* when it suits her…like the historical Ptolemy, who was establishing a dynasty, so he carefully curated his history. Basically, Cameron’s historiography is problematic as it doesn’t show much awareness of the tropes and themes present in ancient literature, and doesn’t properly “interrogate” the ancient sources for bias.

GoW is a very “het” novel although I don’t think he considers himself homophobic. Nonetheless, parts of GoW read as homophobic, and misogynistic too. Or it may just be that his sifting of the sources isn’t, IMO, nuanced enough to recognize the misogyny in the ancient sources. I doubt he likes (or perhaps has not even read) Beth Carney on Olympias. And I’m sorry, but calling a character presented as primarily homosexual (Hephaistion) a “bitch queen” can’t be anything BUT homophobic, unless there’s a counterbalance gay character somewhere in the (800-page) text, and there’s not. Having a gay character in another novel elsewhere really doesn’t count (and that gay character has other moral issues).

He has a military history audience, and he doesn’t dare alienate them. I’m not convinced he fully gets the problems in what he’s written for LGBTQ representation OR misogyny OR complex historiography generally.

As for ATG as Hitler, there are OH, so many problems with that. He’s read a little too much Ian Worthington and Peter Green (and Brian Bosworth and Ernst Badian, maybe), then taken it further. ATG was not the ancient Hitler. That doesn’t mean he was necessarily a good guy, or that conquest should be elevated in the modern world. But just as Cameron doesn’t seem aware of the various tropes in ancient sources and their impact on historiography, he also doesn’t seem to understand how to analyze ancient expectations.

There is, IMO, a middle road between simply condemning Alexander on modern grounds, versus undue elevation of Alexander and the “conquest narrative” found throughout the ancient world. Basically, Alexander pursued what he grew up to understand as a noble aspiration. Virtually nobody in HIS world would have critiqued that, only how he went about achieving it. That doesn’t mean we can’t critique it, but critiques that expect ancient people to think like moderns hitch on anachronism.

This is something I think Classics/ancient history generally is struggling with at present. How do we avoid making conquest into a thing to emulate, versus applying modern moral standards to ancient people?

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

Currently reading: A Companion to Julius Caesar, a 2009 anthology edited by Miriam Griffin. I’ve finished the first four essays and here are my thoughts so far:

Ernst Badian’s From the Iulii to Caesar is an overview of what little we know of Caesar’s family history. Like most aristocrats even today, they were probably a lot less ancient than they claimed they were.

Caesar as a Politician by Erich Gruen presents a much more moderate, civically responsible pre-Gaul Caesar than is usually portrayed. He describes a lot of civil rights work Caesar took on, and evidence against him breaking the law or taking over the government like his enemies claimed.

The Proconsular Years by John T. Ramsey emphasizes how unstable the alliance with Crassus and Pompey was, and how much Caesar was reacting to immediate events instead of masterminding a long-term scheme.

In Dictator, Jane F. Gardner argues that Caesar’s motivations and long-term intentions during his dictatorship were unknowable, and points out that most of our sources are hostile to him. It’s equally possible that he could have intended to hold onto power for life or step down. He made no attempts to establish a dynasty, and his actions as dictator could equally read as either consolidating power or merely attempting to stabilize Rome after repeated outbreaks of political violence.

So far the essays are broadly in agreement with Morstein-Marx’s Julius Caesar and the Roman People, which I thought was a very pro-Caesar take. (An extremely well-researched take, but I do want to get a variety of historians’ opinions.) The next section is about the conquest of Gaul, so I’m sure I’ll see the much darker side of Caesar’s career next.

Expect future excerpts and book commentaries under the tag “jlrrt reads.”

[jeannereames]

What do you think about Bagoas? How do you see Hephaistion interacting with him after, or even if, he became Alexander's lover (eromenos)?

Did Bagoas Exist?

 With that provocative title, I want to consider the sometimes awkward interception of history and historical fiction. But first, a bit of historiography (history of history) with regard to Bagoas.

In 1956, Ernst Badian (Harvard) published an article that literally rocked the academic world in Alexander studies: “The Eunuch Bagoas” (Classical Quarterly 8.3-4: 144-57). Despite the title, it only glancingly addressed Bagoas himself, or Alexander’s sexuality. At root, it was about SOURCE CRITICISM. Badian challenged the long-held preference for Arrian (and Plutarch) over the so-called vulgate of Diodorus, Curtius, and Justin. Arrian was the “good” (trustworthy) historian, while the others varied in their degrees of unreliability, largely based on how hostile they were to Alexander. That oversimplifies, but it’s how Tarn, Burn, Fuller, and Wilcken—never mind Droysen himself—understood our five ancient biographers.

Badian’s article was a shot across the bow. A radical change followed in how Alexander was viewed, due to a change in how the sources were evaluated for truth. The New Crop of leading scholars included Badian, Bosworth, Green, and Schachermeyr, all of whom had a decidedly less positive perspective, because they paid more attention to Curtius, et al. I won’t go into, here, the impact that events such as WW II had on the views of these scholars (two of whom were German and one a German Jew), but it should be figured into the larger story.

In addition, by the late 1960s and ‘70s, Macedonia herself had become a topic of study, not just “Philip and Alexander,” thanks to Charles Edson and Harry Dell, fathers of modern Macedonian studies (“Macedoniasts,” to use Badian’s name). A look at the country that produced Alexander expanded our understanding of how to evaluate him in context.

That was the new buzzword: CONTEXT. Badian had unleashed the genie, and increasingly scholars studied the sources in the context of when and who was writing; they didn’t just take them at face value as some sort of abstract truth.

This is the same journey those who pursue independent study of Alexander must take. Anybody interested in Alexander who reads Arrian, Curtius, or Plutarch in toto (the three easiest to find in English until the recent release by Oxford of a Waterfield’s translation of Diodorus, or Yardley’s earlier translation of Justin) is already ahead of the game. Yet casual readings may not be contextually critical—e.g., with an awareness of WHEN the author wrote, and in WHAT historical circumstances, with all the contingent tropes and literary assumptions at play.

Keeping track of that can be daunting. But important. Modern readers should regard the ancient sources with the same skepticism they might bring to Fox News (or, if your politics differ, MSNBC). Bias was endemic.

What Badian’s article brought was a more critical analysis of the sources. He used Bagoas to get there, as the tendency at the time was to dismiss Bagoas because of rampant homophobia among white male historians in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Badian utterly demolished the historiography of Tarn. It was beautiful and, really, quite brutal.

Yet I want to underscore that Badian didn’t do it to highlight Alexander as Queer. He did it because he had serious issues with Tarn’s tendency to turn Alexander into a Proper Scottish Gentleman. Honestly, Badian’s views of homosexuality weren’t that different from Tarn’s, but he felt no need to “save” Alexander from potentially negative press. Ergo, he wasn’t bothered by the notion that Bagoas existed, and Alexander may have had a fling with him—just as Curtius reports.

We need to keep that in mind, too. For Badian, that Alexander could have taken Bagoas as a lover wasn’t Queer Positive. It was, at best, morally neutral. Attempts by earlier historians to dismiss Bagoas were directly tied to attempts to defend/rehabilitate Alexander—something not on Badian’s agenda.

Here’s where we get down to complicated—but important—brass tacks. Badian did not consider Alexander ethically compromised because of possible homoerotic interests. He considered him ethically compromised for his political and military choices. (Any serious reading of Badian’s bibliography reveals this, but consider his 1960 “the Death of Parmenio” TAPA 91: 324-38, wherein he theorizes that Alexander kept a CIA-style file on Paremenion.) Alexander’s sexual proclivities were pretty far down on Badian’s list, even if not necessarily a good thing.

For Badian, Alexander killed a lot of people, committed war crimes, and practiced causal murder in order to stay in power. That was far more important than who he took to bed.

Enter Mary Renault and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Historian. 😉

I’ll be frank; I have issues with Renault’s not-so-subtle misogyny in a number of her Greek historical novels. That may sound like a strange charge for a bi gal to level against another bi gal, but ‘We’ve come a long way, baby,’ and I’m not going to pussyfoot around Renault’s issues with women, even as I acknowledge they reflect her own era’s attitudes. I’m sure people in 50 years will pick out issues in my novels too, that I didn’t see at the time I wrote them.

Yet Renault read Badian’s article (because she was a smart cookie and did follow hella lot of academic publishing)…and her storyteller’s brain went somewhere else entirely.

Out walked the fictional hero of The Persian Boy.

One rule-of-thumb in historical fiction is not to write a novel from the point-of-view (POV) of a famous historical person. Renault ignored that in Fire from Heaven, perhaps as it followed the young Alexander before he went on to later fame. When she wrote an older, historic Alexander, she utilized the classic approach: centering the POV on an unknown or marginally known historical person who “enters” the world of the story, and is thus able to relate it to the reader (also an outsider). When writing wholly WITHIN a world, it creates real problems. I had to figure out how to get around them in Dancing with the Lion. But that’s a post for another day.

In The Persian Boy, Renault’s use of Bagoas is the classic POV approach for historical fiction.

And then this WEIRD THING happened.

Renault’s fictional Bagoas took on a life of his own, quite apart from historical record.

First, not long after publication of The Persian Boy (1972), Renault released a biography, The Nature of Alexander (1975) that attempted to position her not “merely” as a novelist, but as an educated amateur historian in her own right, citing original sources (which, yes, she could read in Greek). If sometimes overly credulous of the sources, her biography is less problematic than professional historians sometimes like to cast it, which owes, I think, to historians’ general suspicion of historical novelists, as addressed in Sarah Pinto’s “Emotional histories and historical emotions” (Rethinking History 14.2, 2010: 189-207).

In any case, in it, she advances her argument for why she believes Bagoas existed, citing, among other things, Badian. It’s not a bad argument, in part because she doesn’t try to push it too far. She admits to creating a fictional character based on the probable existence of this shadowy figure at Alexander’s court, who (as did Badian) she contends existed. Unlike Badian, she divorces his existence from any evaluation of Alexander’s morality, which (like Tarn) she considers far more elevated than Badian.

So we have a quite curious transition:

Tarn/et al.: Alexander as Philosopher in Armor/Bringer of Western Civilization to the Benighted Barbarian East, who Absolutely Must Not Exhibit any Homosexual (=pathic) Proclivities.

Badian: Alexander was an opportunistic megalomaniac with no moral compass, so Curtius’s account of his same-sex affairs are likely true, but were the least of his ethical issues.

Renault: Alexander was a philosopher in armor like Tarn suggested, but Badain proved Bagoas existed and Tarn was a homophobe, so Alexander’s relationship with Bagoas should be given credence. But Alexander Is Still Good!

Second, The Persian Boy and Fire from Heaven became cult classics in the gay community, as Renault Dared to Go There, however allusively.

Bagoas emerged from The Persian Boy, clothed in Renault’s Coat of Many (Rainbow) Colors, transitioning from a fictional character used to open Alexander’s world to the unfamiliar reader, into a Real Person. This was more than, “Yeah, there may have been a eunuch at Alexander’s court who the king had a fling with, but we don’t know much besides his name.” He became a 3D, enfleshed character who many believe was as Renault wrote him.

It’s really quite remarkable, when you think about it. Renault “invented” Bagoas. As least as he’s popularly presented today. How many authors can claim that? It’s akin to the life that Harry Pottery took on outside Rowling’s world, or Spock outside Roddenberry’s.

For example, Jo Graham stated that the opening lines of her 2010 Stealing Fire literally takes up from the last lines of The Persian Boy. And Bagoas in Oliver Stone’s Alexander owes entirely to Renault, as do several other scenes—literary steals that he never acknowledges, which I find reprehensible. He’s lucky her estate didn’t bother suing him. (Although one can’t copyright plot.)

The power of Bagoas in Alexander reception has been discussed in a chapter for Brill’s Reception of Alexander the Great, “The Unmanly Ruler,” 2018, written by Liz Baynam and Terry Ryan. They have their own take on the matter.

In any case, Stone’s “Alexander” catapulted Bagoas back into popular consciousness for an entirely new generation, many of whom subsequently read Renault. Were she still alive, I wonder what she’d make of the fact her creation has put on skin and breathes? I dare say she’d be tickled pink.

But this brings us to the CRUX.

Dialing back a fictional character to historical reality.

In order to understand my own perspective, I needed to give the context for how we got to where we are, with Bagoas.

So what do I think?

If Badian made several absolutely critical points in his 1956 article, using Bagoas as the medium is, perhaps, ironic in retrospect, in light of much recent scholarship on Romanizing tendencies in the Alexander Histories. I’ve mentioned this trend before, and complained that in some respects, it seems to go too far. But in others, it’s spot-on.

With Bagoas we have a specific problem to unpack.

1 Did Bagoas exist, and historians such as Arrian try to rehabilitate Alexander by ignoring him? (NOT for modern homophobic reasons! For ancient reasons involving sophrosune and philosophical ideals.)

2 Or did Bagoas NOT exist, and Latin historians (esp. Curtius) invent him as part of a thematic scheme to show Alexander succumbing to Evil Eastern debaucheries … really a comment on the Roman Horror of the East, with Marc Antony (even if never emperor) set up as the Bogie Man by marrying that scary, awful Kleopatra.

3) Or maybe there was a eunuch Bagoas taken into Alexander’s house, like most of Darius’s other concubines/household, but Alexander never had any real interaction with him. Later Roman-era historians elevated his importancefor the same reasons mentioned above. The degree to which Alexander made use of Darius’s harem is unclear, and depends on a source’s PROGRAM: to show him as self-restrained (sophrosune) or succumbing to “eastern ways” (= bad).

SO….what does any of that MEAN?

There are loads of problems here to untangle. First, we must attempt to separate (if we can) the programmatic “message” each of the ancient sources is trying to espouse… messages not only different from modern ones, but often offensive to modern ideas.

Then we must NOT react by going the other way, tempting as that may be. I’d suggest Renault fell victim to the temptation, although as a novelist, Bagoas really did offer her a valuable tool. I have issues with The Persian Boy as a novel, but not because she used Bagoas.

Nonetheless, we MUST resist the attempt to push back against Greco-Roman tendencies to demonize the East by buying into Tarn’s “Brotherhood of Mankind” nonsense, which Renault did, and Stone, too. E.g., that Alexander was an early proponent of multiculturalism.

Newsflash. He wasn’t, even while I also don’t think he was as parochial as some of his soldiers. But this is not a Right vs. Left view. Unfortunately, and tragically, I think Alexander became more conservative as he aged, and increasingly disillusioned. If you look at what he DOES (not what he says in speeches that were inventions of later authors, e.g., at Opis), his later appointments are MACEDONIANS. He left only about four Persians in power. Apparently, he’d come to distrust them. Not a pretty picture, eh? Then again, he’d invaded and trashed their country. Can’t imagine why they might not have been his Biggest Fans... (For the argument regarding his appointments, see A. B. Bosworth, 1980. ‘Alexander and the Iranians,’ Journal ofHellenic Studies 100, 1-21.)

All this brings us back to Bagoas.

We need to back up and consider what we know of Greek sexual mores at the time. Greeks did not make eunuchs. In fact, they looked down on ALL bodily modification, from tattoos to pierced ears to circumcision. The ONLY “mars” on a man’s body should be scars…and on the front! (Any on the back implied they were taken while running away, or whipping as a slave.)

Furthermore, this was a deeply misogynistic world where one’s manhood was closely guarded and elevated, and NEVER to be surrendered. Anal sex was permissible only among young boys before they had a proper (male) beard. A man who “made himself like a woman” (accepting anal sex or adopting feminine behaviors) was an object of great ridicule.

Eunuchs would, therefore, have been regarded as, at best, sad, and at worst, gross. They might have been acceptable as slaves for male prostitution, but Greeks would not make them nor utilize them in households. They tended to find the practice disgusting, at least in the Classical era—and that is Alexander’s upbringing. He opened the Hellensitic world, but wasn’t a part of it.

Having a Greek (or Macedonian) male form a serious emotional attachment to a eunuch is, therefore, deeply problematic.

Renault knew that. But she also believed in a modified version of Tarn’s “Brotherhood” theory. She writes Alexander as able to get past those deep-seated Greek biases. I’m far more skeptical. Tarn has been repeatedly debunked, and if I do think Alexander was fascinated by and open to the lands through which he traveled, this shouldn’t be pushed too far. As noted above, his later appointments undercut theories of some Alexandrine multiculturalism. While I think he was an “approach” personality (e.g., he found difference interesting, not automatically scary and weird), we each have limits beyond which we find it difficult to go as a result of the culture in which we were raised.

So what do I think about Bagoas?

I think he existed, but his role at Alexander’s court is far from clear. Much of Curtius’s (and later) accounts of him are meant to undercut Alexander’s JUDGMENT. For instance, Bagoas’s accusations get certain high-ranking officers killed. Ergo, Alexander is succumbing to Oriental Corruption by (horrors!) believing a eunuch’s account. In her biography, Renault attempts to address these realistically, but that’s part of her tendency to take the sources at face value and grant them too much.

So ironically, while Badian’s “The Eunuch Bagoas” got us to seriously reconsider the sources IN context, that very consideration has led me to doubt Bagoas as a figure of any real import.

For those hoping Bagoas will have a significant future role in Dancing with the Lion, I’m sorry to disappoint. My own view is that Alexander would have been kind to him, the same as he was to most who fell under his authority. But Alexander’s own cultural biases would have prevented him from taking a significant interest in a eunuch besides his functional role at court, or possibly as a passing sexual partner. That doesn’t necessarily paint Alexander as enlightened, but I view him as culturally embedded on this matter.

Yet the prominence that Renault’s Bagoas has gained in the modern imagination is a testament to the power of narrative that fits the needs of our current world, which is not at all the same as their world. And THAT is what makes historical fiction different from history.

[jeannereames]

Alexander as LGBTQI Icon

(The last blog-tour repost.)

“Was Alexander the Great gay?”

I get that question ALL the time. The poor horse has been beaten to death, and discussion always ends in an examination of Greek terminology that’s largely academic. I’ve written about it before elsewhere.

I’d like to look at this from a different angle, here.

For decades (maybe centuries), Alexander has been an icon in the queer community. That upsets a portion of his fanbase, including some Greeks. When early publicity for Oliver Stone’s 2004 blockbuster hinted that Alexander had male lovers, a group of Greek lawyers threatened to sue him. Yet as in the rest of Europe, the younger generation cares less, and in 2015, Greece passed recognition of same-sex civil unions, even if they couldn’t quite make the leap to call it “marriage.” As a result, resistance to Alexander as gay, or at least bisexual, has lessened in Greece. Somewhat.

In the rest of the Western world, “Was Alexander gay?” has shifted for many to “Alexander was gay.” Question to statement.

How’d we get here? Indulge me in a tour of Alexander’s treatment in modern history and recent fiction. I’ll keep it as brief as possible, but stay for the payoff, ‘kay?

The earliest modern historians of Alexander (late 1800s) wouldn’t even talk about Alexander and men. Then, in the 1930s, W. W. Tarn wrote a “defense” of him from those naughty insinuations in his 2-book biography. It wasn’t very convincing unless you were inclined to be convinced. After, either silence or righteous indignation were the usual responses to the matter, and historians routinely ignored Hephaistion (his probable lover) in their work because it might bring up the homosexual thing.

Then, in 1958, Ernst Badian published, “The Eunuch Bagoas” in The Classical Quarterly, and the ground shook. Yes, his article influenced Mary Renault’s later Persian Boy, but it wasn’t a manifesto on Alexander’s same-sex partners. Badian sought to rehabilitate the ancient sources that Tarn had dismissed because they’d suggested that Bagoas was, you know, REAL. Hence the article title.

After, scholarship began to talk about Alexander and men. Yet a certain discomfort remained. Most ATG (Alexander the Great) historians of the time were cis straight white guys. If many (some of whom I know personally, so can vouch for) were also left-leaning agnostic/atheist liberals, people are products of their era. They might acknowledge that Alexander had male lovers, but thinking too closely about it was outside their comfort zone.*

In addition, this new generation coincided with the “Badian Revision” that attacked Alexander’s image as Romantic Hero or Gentleman Conqueror—fairly, to be honest. He committed some horrific acts. In any case, the then-current trend painted him (and his friends and supporters, including Hephaistion) with a hostile brush, independent of sexual orientation.

Well, maybe. Of them all, Hephaistion faired worst, and a lot of that assessment was colored by his emotional role in Alexander’s life.

About the same time, Mary Renault (herself bisexual) published Fire from Heaven (1969). We might characterize it as a toe in the water; she’s allusive about Alexander and Hephaistion there. But in 1972, she followed it with The Persian Boy, and threw down the damn gauntlet.

Oh, what a difference a riot can make! Hello, Stonewall.

I’ve noticed a tendency among some younger LGBTQI readers to pooh-pooh Renault for her “off the page” takes on Alexander and sex, or for her idealizing of Alexander, and I agree about the idealizing. But we must place her in her proper historical context. At the time, she was a lightning strike. Whatever I may think of her romanticism, I recognize her enormous impact, and salute her. You go, Grrrrl.

I collect ATG fiction for snorts and giggles, have for a long time. But with a couple exceptions where I was asked to review something, I’ve avoided reading any since 1998, in case it even accidentally influenced my own work. After Dancing with the Lion sold, however, I finally read what I hadn’t, then presented conclusions for an academic paper on Alexander and Hephaistion in fiction post-Stonewall (coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the riot), presented at Emory in Atlanta for the 2019 annual meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians. I won’t detail the books I covered, but will share the PATTERNS I saw, and let you. Gentle Reader, draw conclusions. (This paper has now been enlarged on and published in The Routledge Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities, Ken Moore, ed., Chpt. 11, out 7/22.)

First, and most importantly, all but one novel presented Alexander and Hephaistion as lovers. If the presentations weren’t universally positive, it marked a sharp break with pre-Stonewall books.

In every novel wherein Alexander and Hephaistion’s love affair was positively portrayed, Hephaistion was also presented positively. Alexander may or may not have been. In every novel wherein Alexander and Hephaistion’s relationship (and homoeroticism) was negativized, Hephaistion was also negativized, and usually Alexander as well.

Yet several novels ticked “neither of the above.” In some, the relationship was problematized, usually for plot reasons; in others, the author sent mixed messages about homoeroticism (I think accidentally). Curiously, in most of these, Hephaistion was presented positively while Alexander was not. Finally, in the single novel where they were not lovers, Hephaistion was positive, but Greek homoerotic activity was ignored.

Take-away: authors who portray the relationship positively, have a positive Hephaistion. Authors who show it negatively make Hephaistion (and Alexander) morally iffy, at best. Otherwise, it’s a crap-shoot.

Here’s the kicker (and I bet you can guess what’s coming): the positive portrayals were all by women, plus one (British-Lebanese) man. Neutral portrayals might be a mixed bag, gender-wise. The negative ones? All guys. And the one where they weren’t lovers? A guy.

That, to me, sends a powerful message about who’s comfortable with the idea, regardless of whether an author publicly supports LGBTQI rights. Several of the negative ones were published before 2000, but others were recent-ish.

If the queer civil rights movement has made great strides in the 21st century, we’re experiencing a predictable cultural backlash. And in the current environment, I think it hugely important not just for LGBTQI people generally, but especially LGBTQI youth to be able to look at history and say, “Hey! Alexander the Great loved a man, and look what he accomplished!” I won’t go into, here, whether Alexander was “gay,” “bi,” or if we should even use modern terms; I’ll be happy to do that elsewhere over a beer.

Here, I want to say that, YES, dammit, it’s not only okay, but important for the LGBTQI community to claim Alexander. The fact the person he loved best in the world was another guy could keep some queer kid from suicide or self-harm, or even just give her/him/them a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

----------------------------------------------------------------- *This has changed substantially in the past 20 years and it’s now inaccurate to assume ATG scholars are mostly male, white, or straight. At the last International Alexander Symposium (2018, Edmonton, AB), hosted by Frances Pownall, a substantial number of women scholars presented, at least a third. Furthermore, Frances is, together with Sabine Műller and Sulochana Asirvatham editing the proceeds: a 3-woman editorial team. Frances is also editing a festschrift for Elizabeth Carney (one of the most prominent female scholars on Alexander, Macedonia, and the Successors) along with two others, another of whom is female. And of course, Sulo is not only not male, she’s not white. This is the new face of Macedonian scholarship.

[jeannereames]

In what day was Alexander born? I'm currently reading a book (Alexander the Great by Roger Caratini) which says he was born the 21 of July, but I recall you said this was incorrect. Is this right?

Alexander the Great’s most likely birthday is JULY 19.

So if you want to throw him a party, that’s the date to do it. 😊

Nonetheless, there are questions. Why? Three problems:

1) Use of lunar months. He was born on the 6th of Loos (Macedonian calendar). But to know when the 6th fell in 356 BCE, we must know when the new moon occurred for that month. Lunar calendars don’t match up with solar calendars.

2) Do we trust the source’s reporting? Would they have reason to lie?

3) Greeks didn’t celebrate annual birthdays (unlike Romans). So when one was born could be forgotten—including the month, never mind the day.

For number 1 … the reason you’re MOST likely to see Alexander’s birthday given as July 20th is because *most* years, the new moon falls on the 14th, so six days later is the 20th. BUT, in 336 BCE, the new moon fell on the 13th, ergo, the 6th of Loos was the 19th.

How do we know? Ernst Badian trekked over to the astronomy department at Harvard and asked them to calculate it. 😉 And no, I can’t (now) find the article where it’s embedded in a footnote, but the detail was so interesting, I remember it. (Keep in mind Badian never wrote a monograph, but produced well over 200 articles….) So I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it. That said, if anybody does find that footnote, please email or message me with the citation!

Number 2 is more of a problem. Do we trust Plutarch, who gives us the 6th of Loos as his birthday? There’s a big potential reason not to. Supposedly, Alexander was born on the same day the Great Temple of Artemis in Ephesos burned. Why? Artemis was off overseeing the birth of Alexander, not paying attention to her temple. (Incidentally, the guy who set it on fire, Herostratos, did so in order to be remembered by history, according to his trial.)

Hmm. Makes a nice omen, no? This is why the date itself is suspect and if you want to ignore it and just conclude he was born around midsummer of 356, that’s perfectly valid.

On the side of why it might be his real birthday…. Given that Greeks did not normally celebrate birthdays, if Alexander’s happened to coincide with a notable event, it would make it easier to remember later, once he turned out to be important.

For instance, my mother died Aug. 30th, 1997. In the US, we don’t celebrate death anniversaries the same as birthdays or weddings. But I remember month and year fairly easily for two reasons. I was 6 months pregnant with my son (born Dec. 19th 1997), and she died the same day as Princess Diana. I watched all the news coming in that night, as I sat awake at her bedside. Diana died in the early hours of the 30th. My mother died at 2:30 that same afternoon. Later, my father would say, “Two princesses died that day.”

So someone may have realized, when word came (weeks or months later) that the temple had burned, that it coincided with the day Alexander had been born. Perhaps some functionary quipped that Alexander would have to be important because Artemis attended his birth! Like my father’s comment about two princesses dying on one day.

If Alexander had caught malaria as an infant and died, nobody would recall the “omen.” But he didn’t. He went on to become Alexandros Aniketos (the Unconquerable). So people did remember. That’s why we have a birthday for him--unlike other very famous figures such as Perikles or Sokrates, or Philip himself. We can’t name their birth months, and in the case of Perikles and Sokrates, even their birth year. That’s how little the Greeks cared about such things.

So I am, ironically, more inclined to believe the 6th of Loos birthday rather than less, because of the Artemis temple connection.

And if it is correct, then he was born July 19th.

Finally: You will see some other significantly different dates offered for various reasons, most often by those who doubt the 6th of Loos date (for reasons suggested). I haven’t found their arguments convincing, personally. I think it’s the 6th or we just don’t know.

That said, I do want to shoot down one argument that periodically arises. Some want to put his birthday later in July or even August, in order to make it line up with the Zodiac sign of Leo, arguing he had to have been a Leo (sun sign).

If one doesn’t follow astrology, that’s ridiculous. Even if one does follow astrology, it’s still ridiculous, displaying a shallow understanding of horoscopes and the role of the sun sign. If one knows both astrology and Alexander’s life, that he was a Cancer makes oh, so much more sense. In any case, one can’t base a projected birthdate on what one thinks his sun sign “ought” to have been. Really, people. Stop.

Some folks have asked if we have a birthday for him in the Babylonian chronicles. We don’t. We have his death day from that, but not his birthday.

[jeannereames]

So, do you believe Philotas was guilty or innocent?

I actually wrote an article about it, called “Crisis and Opportunity: the Philotas Affair…Again.”

It’s part of a “conversation” across articles that began with Ernst Badian’s 1960 “The Death of Parmenio,” where Badian essentially accused Alexander of keeping a CIA style “file” on Philotas and using that to get rid of Parmenion’s whole family. In 1977, Rubinsohn replied with “The Philotas Affair: a Reconsideration,” partly to Tarn’s original exoneration of Alexander, as well as to Badian, wherein he sensibly pointed out that Philotas had been an idiot, but not culpable. Waldemar Heckel’s “The Conspiracy against Philotas” also appeared in 1977 (so neither he nor Rubinsohn were talking to each other), where Heckel suggested it was the other Marshals (esp. Hephaistion, and a bit of Krateros) going after Philotas when the opportunity presented, based on “cui bono” (who benefits?).

In 2000, Badian came back with “Conspiracies,” where he essentially reasserted his original argument (Alexander was after Parmenion’s family). Lindsay Adams answered in 2003, “The Episode of Philotas: an Insight,” in which he asked “cui creditit” (who would believe) instead of “cui bono,” that both Badian and Heckel asked. His argument was that Alexander was willing to believe Philotas was guilty because he’d heard and kept silent, hoping the conspiracy would succeed, because ALEXANDER had known about the conpsiracy against Philip, and let it go forward, even if he didn’t instigate it.

Last, in 2008, I put out the article linked above, wherein I basically pick up Rubinsohn’s arguement that Philotas Did a Dumb, and add to it the behavior of people in “Crisis Mode,” which is a different form of thinking from normal reasoning (based on my experiences doing on-call work in hospital ERs).

But read my argument, for the full discussion. I do think the other Marshals, especially Krateros, took swift advantage of the opportunity Philotas presented them, but I see Krateros as more culpable than either Hephaistion or Koinos. Of those three (who were behind Philotas’s torture), Krateros had the most to potentially gain, whereas both Hephaistion and Koinos had reasons besides personal advancement to be furious with Philotas (H. angry at the danger to Alexander, Koinos worried about being implicated as he was Philotas’s brother-in-law). I really don’t think Hephaistion anticipated, or had reason to anticipate, his subsequent appointment to the Companions, whereas I do think Krateros believed he’d step into Parmenion’s shoes, or at least Philotas’s. (I don’t know that any of them, at the time, foresaw it would all end in Parmenion’s murder.)