Leah Stoogenke is a recent graduate from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has always been interested in ancient history but found a particular love for the Macedonian empire, specifically Alexander the Great and his contemporaries. Her primary interest since then has been humanizing classical figures by analyzing and writing about their personalities, psychologies, emotions, and motivations.
There are few details regarding the life of Hephaestion, son of Amyntor, that are not as contested as they are acknowledged. The dearth of information can be attributed to biases of both modern scholarship and ancient biographers, and has resulted in most accounts of Hephaestion being limited to his personal relationship with Alexander the Great. It is undisputed by any source that Alexander granted Hephaestion the privilege to advise him more candidly than any other person, though most seem to overlook the extent to which Alexander’s success may have been reliant on Hephaestion’s support (Curtius, 3.12.16). That Alexander thought so highly of Hephaestion’s advice is enough reason to question the multitude of sources that minimize Hephaestion’s importance to either a romantic partner or loyal servant to Alexander. On the contrary, there is significant evidence to support the argument that Hephaestion had a far greater impact on the success of the Alexandrian empire than is currently credited to him.
Hephaestion was undoubtedly a devoted confidant to Alexander. He was noted to be the quickest of Alexander’s friends to adopt the king’s policies with regard to combining Macedonian and Persian tradition, and was thus chosen as Alexander’s main ambassador to foreign territories (Plut. Alex. 47). It is evident in his actions as ambassador that Hephaestion was motivated by a legitimate political alignment with Alexander rather than by personal loyalty. When tasked with appointing a new king to Sidon, Hephaestion independently showed principles similar to Alexander. Responding to the suggestion that he appoint an impoverished but honest gardener of royal blood, Hephaestion reportedly commended the choice of a man uninterested in “the kind of power that others pillaged and murdered to gain,” a commendation which Alexander later echoes (Curtius 4.1.17). While Hephaestion predominantly followed Alexander’s orders, he on occasion challenged or disobeyed the king’s command, enough so that to call him a devoted “yes-man” would unfairly diminish his role in Alexander’s court. He clashed with Alexander on the matter of Philotas’ arrest and punishment, and was berated by Alexander for a fight against his rival Craterus (Plut. Alex. 47).
If not prized by Alexander as a groupie—as perhaps could describe his “uncritical trust” in the seer Aristander (Curtius, 7.7.8), who tended to prophesize his good fortune—and not a skilled enough military tactician to warrant the level of command given to the likes of Perdiccas, some trait of his “favorite friend” still had Alexander convinced that Hephaestion deserved the title of his alter-ego: the Patroclus to his Achilles. Much like Patroclus, Hephaestion was more logistically-minded than his hot-tempered counterpart. Alexander, as Arrian pinpoints, “was a berserker, as addicted to glory as men are to any other overmastering passion, and he lacked the discipline to keep himself out of danger” (Anab. 6.13.4). Creating an empire and maintaining one are two completely different challenges, and while Alexander by the most congratulatory accounts was said to possess the tactical genius, charisma, and military prowess necessary to conquer such a vast territory, there are undoubtedly elements of kingship that were either uninteresting to him or beyond his ability, berserker as he was.
In these fields of organisation, diplomacy, and negotiation, Hephaestion was the ideal “other half,” not only excelling at logistics and infrastructure, but, by virtue of his childhood friendship with the king, able to execute commands exactly how Alexander intended, without need for excessive instruction. In his assignments as military supply and transport officer, which included commanding the majority of the king’s army on marches, sieging, or fortifying cities, building bridges and ships for army movement, and peripherally supplying the force with resources, Hephaestion repeatedly preempted Alexander’s needs. Arrian writes that “when Alexander reached the river Indus he found a bridge already constructed across it by Hephaestion, and a collection of smaller boats as well as two thirty-oared vessels” (Anab. 5.3.5). Hephaestion’s ability to predict and overcome obstacles ahead of the king allowed Alexander to freely move throughout his territories, managing revolts, plots, and envoys as they occurred.
Hephaestion’s involvement in battle may have been a strategic method to ensure the trust of the military-minded Macedonians. He nearly always shared command with another general, usually Perdiccus or Alexander himself. In his command at Mallia, Hephaestion was “stationed furthest from the battle” with the primary assignment of setting up camp (Reames, 197). J.F.C. Fuller points out that Alexander expected the Mallian rebels to break East, towards their allies, rather than South, where he stationed Hephaestion. This is the case in enough of Hephaestion’s commands to seem intentional, and while it is possible that Alexander simply wanted to keep his closest companion out of harm’s way, such a goal could have been accomplished without Hephaestion having any command position at all. In contrast, making a show of Hephaestion’s leadership in a military setting successfully allowed him to continue making strategic decisions regarding diplomatic relations and movement of troops without his calls being questioned by the Macedonians. Hephaestion was later appointed to the position of chiliarch, making him second in authority and privileged with “supreme control over the entire state and all the civil servants” (Reames, 202), which manifested as responsibilities including managing audiences with the king, commanding Alexander’s personal guard, keeping him informed of world affairs, advising him on possible courses of action, and leading diplomacy missions.
Hephaestion has been overlooked by both modern scholars and his contemporaries, who at best believed his role to be logistical and therefore unimportant, and at worst considered him nothing more than a boy-toy to the king. In contrast, however, Alexander’s reason for referring to Hephaestion as an extension of himself perhaps went beyond his intention to emulate his ancestor, Achilles. Understanding the requirements to both conquer and maintain an empire the size of Alexander’s, it is logical to believe that Hephaestion’s advice and support were integral to the success of Alexander’s campaigns. Without Hephaestion, Alexander could not have maintained the land he conquered, and without Alexander, Hephaestion could not have conquered land to maintain.