Was Alexander the Great addicted to sex? The truth about the conqueror's love life

Was Alexander the Great addicted to sex? The truth about the conqueror's love life Alexander’s wives and lovers connected him to powerful families across his empire. But amid competing dynasties and potential heirs, his closest attachment may have been to the companion whose death left him devastated In 324 BC, Alexander the Great lost the man who had accompanied him through much of his extraordinary life. Hephaestion died after falling ill at Ecbatana, in what is now western Iran. The ancient historian Arrian describes how, overwhelmed by grief, Alexander fell into a state of dismay. He refused food, neglected himself, and lay immobilised by mourning. Orders for public grief carried a private bereavement across his empire. Arrian’s account acknowledges disagreements over the details, but insists that the intensity of Alexander’s sorrow was beyond dispute. For Edmund Richardson, professor of classics at Durham University and author of Alexander: God, King, Man, this was the defining attachment within an exceptionally complicated personal life. “Really the closest relationship of his life was with his childhood friend Hephaestion,” he explains, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. But Alexander also had wives, other female lovers and children. How did this all mesh together? A king with many families Born in 356 BC, Alexander grew up in Macedonia, a kingdom centred in what is now northern Greece. His father, Philip II, transformed it into a formidable military power. When Philip was assassinated in 336 BC, Alexander inherited the throne aged 20. He also inherited an example of royal marriage in which one wife did not necessarily replace another. “Like his father, Philip II, Alexander is cheerfully polygamous,” says Richardson. “He has one of the most complicated and elaborate collections of sexual partners in history.” For a Macedonian king, marriage was an important political tool that could connect different aristocratic families to the throne, secure alliances and produce potential heirs. But each additional family also introduced competing interests. A child might give its mother and her relatives greater influence; another marriage could threaten their standing. Richardson describes “multiple children, multiple families, multiple power bases; everyone looking over their shoulders and everyone trying to get Alexander's attention”. This helps explain why questions about Alexander’s sexuality and sexual identity produce an incomplete picture. Modern identity categories do not map neatly onto his world. Marriage to women and fatherhood, alongside intimacy with men, were not necessarily mutually exclusive. Barsine and a connection to childhood Alexander’s invasion of the Persian empire in 334 BC brought him into contact with families whose influence stretched far beyond Macedonia. Among them was Barsine, daughter of the Persian aristocrat Artabazus. Her connection to Alexander, however, apparently began much earlier. She was someone “who Alexander actually knew from his childhood because she was in exile at the Macedonian court while he was growing up”, Richardson explains, “and whom he seems to have been exceedingly smitten with”. The relationship linked Alexander’s upbringing to the world he was conquering. Barsine belonged to a Persian elite familiar with Greek culture; she had also been married to Memnon, a Greek commander who served Persia. According to Plutarch’s account, she was captured at Damascus after Alexander’s victory at Issus in 333 BC. He describes her education and distinguished ancestry as attractions, alongside encouragement from Alexander’s general Parmenion. “With Barsine, he had a son called Heracles,” Richardson says. Heracles appears in ancient accounts as Alexander’s son, although historians have questioned the certainty of that paternity. Barsine herself is generally distinguished from Alexander’s formally acknowledged wives. Later, in 327 BC, Alexander married Roxana, whom Richardson describes as “the aristocrat from the East”. She was the daughter of Oxyartes, a nobleman associated with Bactria, a region encompassing parts of modern Afghanistan and neighbouring Central Asia. Alexander had pushed far beyond Persia’s western territories, encountering determined resistance as he attempted to consolidate his conquests. Ancient accounts present him as captivated by Roxana. The marriage also connected him to a prominent local family in a difficult region. A wedding to join together empires By 324 BC, Alexander had defeated Darius III, Persia’s last reigning Achaemenid king, and extended his campaigns into the Indian subcontinent. At Susa, in modern Iran, he staged marriages joining his Macedonian companions to women from the Persian elite. Alexander married Stateira, Darius’s daughter. Arrian also records his marriage to Parysatis, daughter of an earlier Persian king, Artaxerxes III. Roxana remained his wife. These new marriages added royal connections rather than replacing an existing household, but in effect Alexander was binding himself to the dynasty whose empire he had conquered. Hephaestion, meanwhile, married Stateira’s sister Drypetis. Arrian explains that Alexander wanted their children to be cousins. Even the arrangements for future generations drew his closest companion into his family. - Read more | 2,200 years ago Rome got caught in the Thucydides Trap. The result transformed the ancient world But producing possible successors was different from securing a succession. “With Roxana, he had a son called Alexander, Alexander IV,” Richardson says. That child was born after his father’s death in Babylon in June 323 BC. Richardson also considers it probable that Stateira was pregnant when Alexander died. Her pregnancy remains an uncertainty, but her royal ancestry made her a potential centre of opposition. So, according to the tradition preserved by Plutarch, Roxana arranged Stateira’s murder with the assistance of Perdiccas, one of Alexander’s commanders. The death of Hephaestion For all these dynastic calculations, Richardson places Hephaestion at the emotional centre of Alexander’s life. “Alexander and Hephaestion were friends, were companions, were sometimes lovers.” That last description is Richardson’s interpretation of a relationship whose precise sexual nature remains debated. The surviving evidence establishes exceptional closeness more securely than it documents what happened privately between them. Hephaestion was also a senior commander. Their bond encompassed shared experience, military responsibility and political trust, alongside the intimacy Richardson identifies. “And Hephaestion's death, less than a year Alexander's own, absolutely broke him,” he says. “It was grief that he just simply never recovered from.” Alexander could accumulate territories, titles, wives, children, and royal connections. None supplied a replacement for the companion he had lost. Edmund Richardson was speaking to Rob Attar on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. Authors James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra