Yes, there's evidence that Alexander the Great was gay or bi

Early in the first episode of the new Netflix series Alexander: The Making of a God,Alexander the Great (Buck Braithwaite) shares a kiss with one of his generals, Hephaestion (Will Stevens). That quickly roused the ire of conservatives.

“Netflix made a new documentary about Alexander The Great. Within the first 8 minutes, they turned him gay,” the End Wokeness account posted on X, formerly Twitter.

In the series, however, which mixes documentary techniques (such as interviews with historians) with dramatizations, Netflix is merely going on the historical evidence that indicates Alexander was indeed gay or bisexual, although the ancient world didn’t label people’s sexuality the way we do today.

Alexander and Hephaestion, the love of his life | Alexander: The Making of a God | Netflixyoutu.be

Alexander was born in 356 B.C.E. in Macedonia, a kingdom in northeastern Greece. He became king at age 19 after the assassination of his father, Philip II, and a few more murders and machinations. His reading of Homer’s Iliad — he was tutored by no less than Aristotle — inspired him to become a soldier and conqueror. Over the next few years Alexander and his armies defeated the powerful Persian Empire and extended Macedonia’s holdings as far as India. He died of disease in 323 B.C.E. in what is now Iraq.

He was married three times and fathered at least one child, but Hephaestion appeared to be the love of his life. “Hephaistion was the man whom Alexander loved, and for the rest of their lives their relationship remained as intimate as it is now irrecoverable: Alexander was only defeated once, the Cynic philosophers said long after his death, and that was by Hephaistion’s thighs,” historian Robin Lane Fox wrote in his 2013 book Alexander the Great. (Note: Spelling often varies in modern renderings of ancient names.)

Hephaestion died of an illness in 324 B.C.E., and his death “plunged Alexander into grief,” according to a National Geographic article. “He reportedly draped himself over Hephaestion’s corpse, refused food, cut his hair, and organized an extravagant funeral.”

The article and other sources note that most written accounts of the relationship came centuries after Alexander’s death, so we can’t be 100 percent sure about its nature. But same-sex relationships were common in ancient Greece. Often there was an age and power differential, with older men being mentors to younger ones and having sex with them as well.

The Alexander-Hephaestion relationship doesn’t fit this model, however, as they were about the same age and “Hephaestion was taller and more handsome, so it might have appeared that he held the power in their relationship,” scholar Athena Richardson wrote on the George Washington University website. When historians downplay the men’s affection, it amounts to bisexual erasure, she said.

Meanwhile, Forbes contributor Dani Di Placido noted, “There is no concrete evidence that Alexander and Hephaestion were lovers, but there is plenty of evidence hinting that the two were more than friends.”

In the series, professor Salima Ikram of the American University of Cairo said, “Hephaestion really was not just a cherished companion, but perhaps [Alexander’s] greatest love.”

Some historians also point to a relationship, likely sexual, between Alexander and Bagoas the Younger, a eunuch who served in the court of Persia’s King Darius III and became essentially the property of Alexander after Darius’s death. Quintus Curtius Rufus, an ancient Roman and historian of Alexander, wrote that Bagoas was “a eunuch of exceptional appearance and in the very flower of boyhood, with whom Darius had had a relationship, and with whom Alexander soon had one.”

In ancient Greece, people weren’t seen as gay, straight, or bisexual, historians have noted. “Same-sex relationships were quite the norm throughout the Greek world,” professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones of Cardiff University in Wales said in the Netflix series. “The Greeks did not have a word for homosexuality or to be gay. It just wasn’t in their vocabulary whatsoever. There was just being sexual.”

At any rate, it does seem that Netflix didn’t “turn” Alexander gay, as there is indeed evidence of his relationships with men. And in chronicling every aspect of the great conqueror, the series is particularly relevant given Greece’s recent vote to legalize same-sex marriage, catching up with most other European countries and, in a way, honoring its history. Macedonia is still a region of Greece; there is also a North Macedonia, a separate country just to the north, incorporating some of the historic region. The country was known just as Macedonia until a few years ago; Greece objected to its use of the name.

Within Greece and the lands Alexander conquered, numerous sites associated with him are open to visitors. So after viewing the Netflix series, why not plan a trip to Greece?

Pictured: A mosiac depicting Alexander the Great and Hephaestion during a lion hunt