Hephaestion

Hephaestion was a Macedonian nobleman, senior officer and close companion of Alexander the Great. His death in 324 BC deeply affected Alexander and became one of the most personal crises of the later campaign years.

In Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven, his taming of Bucephalus, friendship with Hephaestion and education under Aristotle help shape the confidence with which he imagines a larger destiny. In Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s Child of a Dream, Tutored by Aristotle and bound closely to companions including Hephaestion and Ptolemy, Alexander learns to command cavalry, judge men and conceal his own ambitions. Other novels featuring Hephaestion include Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy, Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s The Ends of the Earth, and Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s The Sands of Ammon.

In non-fiction, Hephaestion is discussed in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander and Diodorus Siculus’s The Library, Books 16-20. In Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander, the executions of Philotas and Parmenion, the killing of Cleitus, the conspiracy involving Callisthenes, Alexander’s marriage to Roxana and the death of Hephaestion reveal a command fractured by fear and rivalry.