Alexander's Lover [Alexander the Great + Hephaestion | mxm]

II

One day, Philip summoned Alexander to him.

"I have decided that the teachers of the Macedonian court do not provide you with the challenge you deserve," he told his son. Alexander was being tutored by Anaximenes of Lampsacus, a rhetorician and historian, Leonidas, a relative of Olympias, and Lysimachus who obtained second place among the prince's tutors through flattery. The latter called Alexander Achilles, and Philip Peleus. In time, the young Achilles came to be known as such by the entire palace. But he showed promise, more than these tutors could work with. Philip was therefore considering some of the finest academics of the day, among them Isocrates, Speusippus, and Aristotle.

King Philip had done the unthinkable, building one of the most organized military forces in Greece despite leading what the Athenians scornfully considered the least organized, most bearish and unrefined Greek city. Some day, Alexander would build on his legacy. For that, he needed to be intellectually fit.

Olympias was political, religious and dynastian - absolutely ruthless when it came to getting her son Alexander on the throne.

Both she and her husband Philip agreed on this one thing and one thing only: that Alexander was to be great, and it was their role to prepare him for it. They were both worried that Alexander was growing up as a guiness, a femboy. They suggested importing high-class call girls to set him straight.

Eventually, Olympias brought to him a Thessalian courtesan named Callixena.

"Sleep with her," Olympias implored him. "Alexander, my son, the most important thing you can do - what you must do - is take a wife and produce an heir. Have many wives, and many children. You must, Alexander. If you forget everything else I've taught you, remember this one thing."

Olympias routinely begged him to sleep with the courtesan, to no avail.

Alexander had no interest in the girls, apart from pity for their cruel plight. He despised the idea of coerced relationships, and the insistence of his parents only put him off more. But he had to appease his masculine, militant, hard-drinking, dominant, alpha male father. He also didn't want to shame and disgrace the women. Therefore, he took them into his chambers when he had no other choice, but never slept with them.

***

Philip had chosen the ideal man to be his son's tutor. He chose Aristotle, a philosopher, writer and scholar who had learned from Plato himself.

Alexander and a select cohort of boys, the sons of Macedonian nobles, would begin their education in a month. It went without saying that Hephaestion would be among the chosen Companions - as everyone kew he was Alexander's shadow - which was just as well for his father was an aristocrat. Their classroom was to be the Temple of the Nymphs at Mieza. There, they would learn medicine, philosophy, morals, ethics, religion, logic, and art. In return, Aristotle asked only that Philip restore his ravaged hometown, freeing slave and exile. To this, Philip agreed.

***

"Although an inferior race, the Persians control at least four fifths of the known world." Aristotle gestured with his stick to the pebble mosaic map beneath his feat. Alexander flinched at the term inferior, refusing to believe it. But not long ago, Aristotle's dear friend Hermias of Atarneus had been tortured and killed in Persia; it was surely the man's grief that made him perceive the Persians as barbaric. "But, is it possible that the source of Egypt's mighty river Nile could rise in these distant mountains of the outer Earth?"