Hephaistion's pyre question

[Paralus]

I believe that bone recovery would not have been Alexander's priority in the pyre design anyway.

What you believe is irrelevant. That the Macedonians recovered and buried the bones after cremation is the point - a point attested in the sources and proved by the burials at Aegae. What is your logical reasoning for claiming that the recovery and interment of Hephaestion's bones was not a priority for Alexander? (not holding my breath).

I do not myself believe that Alexander necessarily used such a steel mesh or perforated iron container...

And that's a lovely photo you've posted. I note no details whatsoever and wonder why? Perhaps because the vessel is likely something in the order of 25 cm tall? Perhaps Hephaestion underwent ritual shrinkage prior to cremation?

For someone who does not believe that a steel container, mesh or perforated iron was used by Alexander, you are making one hell of a song and dance about it. And, just to correct the record here, you claimed "by encasing the body in a steel (or other high melting point) container or mesh" the bones would be protected (even though, ostensibly, these were no longer important). Nothing mentioned about perforated vessels. It has been pointed out to you that the idea of steel mesh in Alexander's time is fiction. Your response, as always in such cases, is to alter your position. Your altered position now is that perforation equals mesh. About as subtle as shoving a sarisa into your pocket. Perhaps you should begin to go back and edit your earlier posts?

It wouldn't be a thread involving Andrew Chugg without the incomparable authority of Wiki being cited. First the old fall back of an empire of millions with funding and men aplenty and now Wikipedia. One can imagine the response of an anonymous referee when the answer to the question "What is your authority for this claim?" is "Wikipedia".

But the important thing is that the bone recovery objection to the pyre falls just as all other objections have been shown to be fatuous and without foundation in science or evidence.

Ah, I note you've altered this paragraph and added "fatuous". What is pointless here is attempting to have you engage with the argument and evidence presented throughout this thread by others. You have spent the entire thread declaiming and restating your personal view as if it were incontrovertible fact. When challenged you have misrepresented what others have written, indulged in red herrings (steel being just the latest), simply ignored evidence and detail directed at you and, worst of all, not so subtly altered what you yourself have claimed.This is not surprising; it is your "method".

[marcus]

sorry, not sure what went wrong with "quote" use in this post....if you know how to correct it, I'd appreciate your help.

I've done it for you.

You have to make sure that, at the end of the section you are quoting, you put: [/quote].

ATB

[amyntoros]

I believe the bone fragments would have been scattered within 15 metres of the centre of the pyre and could easily have been recovered by sifting the ash anyway. I believe that bone recovery would not have been Alexander's priority in the pyre design anyway. But the important thing is that the bone recovery objection to the pyre falls just as all other objections have been shown to be fatuous and without foundation in science or evidence. There is no sound objection. There is no reason to doubt the pyre except doubt itself.

<Sigh> Of course there is sound objection. There is evidence, both literary and archaeological, as has already been pointed out in this thread. I previously posted quotes on the purpose of the (Homeric) cremation, so let's proceed to the burial. Burial involves the remains of the corpse - in the case of ancient cremation, the bones - being placed underground. The tombs at Vergina, buildings though they may be, were covered by a mound of earth, thereby putting the bodies underground.

Another long quote ahead, this time from Robert Garland's The Greek Way of Death, pages 101-102. There may be an internet link for this but I'm copying it from my own book.

In Eurpides we may detect traces of the belief that the unburied dead (ataphoi) could not enter Hades but were condemned to haunt this earth to which they remained indissolubly bound. In later times the souls of the unburied dead could be invoked in the service of magic, their wanderings only coming to an end when the rite of burial had been duly performed.

The importance, or rather the necessity, of conducting burial rites on behalf of the Greek dead, and the corresponding insult to human dignity if they be omitted, is so frequently alluded to both in the tragedians and the historians that it scarcely needs any illustration. Recognition of the due of burial, described by Theseus in Euripides' Supplicants as being 'a Panhellenic law', extended to the almost invariable custom of returning the bodies of one's fallen enemies on the battlefield ... ...

It remains to consider why the performing of the due of the dead (geras thanonton) was so important, and why omission was so shocking to Greek sentiment. Or more accurately, since almost all societies stress the need for respectful treatment of the corpse, we need to try to determine what feelings and beliefs underlay its significance in Greek eyes.

As we might expect where matters of religion are concerned, no single belief prevails to the exclusion of all others. This can easily be exemplified by reference to the lengthy debate in the Ajax of Sophokles as the whether the hero, by willing the deaths of his military commanders, has forfeited his right to burial. The debate turns upon many issues. Upholding Ajax's claim, the Chorus accuses Menelaos of being a violator by proposing to override it. Teukros says vaguely that Ajax's burial is justified, but Menelaos, who classes him among the enemy, complains that if Ajax is interred a murderer will prosper. Menelaos is cautioned not to insult the gods and warned darkly that if he mistreats the dead, he will be punished. What is interesting about the debate is not only the points it raises, but also those it omits. It is striking that no eschatological argument is advanced on Ajax's behalf. Nowhere either in this play or, for that matter, in the Antigone which poses an identical problem, does Sophokles argue that the soul of the unburied dead could find no peace in Hades - a point of contrast with the Iliad in which Patroklos appears to Achilles demanding burial so that he can gain admission to Hades (Il. 23.71ff.). Instead Sophokles directs all our thoughts to the sheer horror of treating a human being like a carcase. Equally illuminating is the omission of any reference either to the malignant influence of the unburied dead or to the necessity for burial on utilitarian, hygienic grounds. It is an offence against humanity and against the gods that claims for burial, according to Sophokles, chiefly rest.

Although the Sophokles references above discuss only actual burial, not cremation, it is worth noting that, per Eurydice in Antigone:

I went with Creon
Up to the hill where Polyneices' body
Still lay, unpitied, torn by animals
We gave it holy washing, and we prayed
To Hecate and Pluto that they would
Restrain their anger and be merciful.
And then we cut some branches, and we burned
What little had been left, and built a mound
Over his ashes of his native soil.

And yet you still say that, "I believe that bone recovery would not have been Alexander's priority in the "pyre" design anyway." What was it you said to me earlier in this thread? Ah ... "It is tragic that the same cannot be said of modern speculation on the matter, which seems usually to be based on instinct rather than evidence or facts."

Regards,

[amyntoros]

I didn't answer this in my earlier post:

I believe the bone fragments would have been scattered within 15 metres of the centre of the pyre and could easily have been recovered by sifting the ash anyway.

A "pyre" the size of a city block and over 20 stories high, as Xenophon noted earlier, and you expect the Macedonians to have sifted the ash once the fire was out? With a body that was once nominally in the center but could have fallen anywhere once the building collapsed into itself? And with bones that were no doubt reduced to fragments because of extended exposure to heat and the falling of the body from such a great height into the hot charcoal of the interior depths of the fire?

Then there's this:

However, it is not necessary to insist upon steel, because an open wood fire will not melt iron either (as Alexander would have known very well - iron smelting being something that happened within local communities back then).
This objection to the idea that bone irrecoverability makes the pyre impossible is quite unavoidable. I do not myself believe that Alexander necessarily used such a steel mesh or perforated iron container, but he could have, if he had been worried about bone recovery, so it would not have stopped him building a large pyre.

Not a large pyre, I agree. But not something of this size, where the flames could not be doused for the recovery of the bones. No, he would not have built a structure for burning that made this even remotely possible. And if Alexander had used a perforated iron container for Hephaistion's body then it would have "baked" very nicely with the steam able to escape! The idea was to cremate the body, not cook it.

Regards,

[Paralus]

Not a large pyre, I agree. But not something of this size, where the flames could not be doused for the recovery of the bones. No, he would not have built a structure for burning that made this even remotely possible. And if Alexander had used a perforated iron container for Hephaistion's body then it would have "baked" very nicely with the steam able to escape! The idea was to cremate the body, not cook it.

Well, according to Taphoi, the recovery of the bones was not terribly important. At least it wasn't a "priority" for Alexander to recover the bones of his "boon companion". One wonders, then, at the continued, wholly imaginative and somewhat embarrassing constructs "proving" that recovery was possible. One suspects that Taphoi well knows the importance of the burial of the bones; he is compelled to find a way for their recovery to occur despite his baseless speculation that such recovery was "not a priority".

The entire line of argument that the recovery of the bones was not important is nothing more than a self-serving construct of desperation. The sources and the tumulus at Aegae demonstrate this clearly. Antigonus Monophthalmus, "because of his former friendship", cremated Eumenes and, putting his "bones in an urn, he sent them to his relatives" (Diod. 18.44.2). Eumenes famously carried the cremated bones of Craterus with him and entrusted them to one Ariston who returned them Phila in 315 (19.59.3). Other examples may be adduced but the point is clear enough: the bones were important as was their interment. To suggest that Alexander did not perceive the recovery of the bones of his greatest friend as a priority is a rather perverse suggestion.

[Xenophon]

Of course we all know why Taphoi defends the impossible with increasingly desperate vehemence of the 'maybe it could have been so' variety - rather like the pet shop owner in Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketch ! It's because it is part of his own published works as 'fact'. But let us get away from his imaginative 'flights of fancy' for a moment and get back to what is being debated here.

D.S. XVII. 115 purports to describe Hephaistion’s funeral pyre, set in Babylon, though on balance it seems more likely to have taken place in Ecbatana, almost 300 miles from Babylon by the most direct route, where he died. This description is not reflected in any other source, save that Arrian too places the funeral in Babylon.

Firstly, let us go back a little. Hephaestion dies following a campaign [325/324 BC], which ends with the army resting in Ecbatana [Justin XII.12.11; Plutarch Alexander 72; Arrian VII.14]. So far, our sources are in agreement. Let us return to Diodorus. Alexander then grieves for a few days,apparently hands over Hephaestion's body to Perdiccas with instructions to take it to Babylon, while he initiates a campaign against the Cossaeans which lasts around 40 days [XVII.114]. Then he sets off for Babylon "at an easy pace... interrupting the march frequently and resting the army.”[XVII.112] – which implies a march of around a month or so.

On arrival, he then spends time dealing with numerous embassies [XVII.113.3] Evidently no-one is in any hurry to deal with Hephaestion’s funeral !! (Unless of course it had taken place already, in Ecbatana ).

At last, in Diodorus [114], Alexander turns his attention to the funeral, “that not only surpassed all those previously celebrated on Earth, but also left no possibility for anything greater in later ages.”

What can be the source for this ‘greatest show on earth’ version of the funeral ? The likeliest candidate is Epihippus, who wrote a book about “The Funerals of Hephaestion and Alexander.” Now obviously, such a book is not going to be about an ordinary funeral, or even one of Homeric proportions, and it likely belongs to the ‘fables’ about Alexander following his death, each one more ‘fabulous’ ( and impossible) than the last. Alexander had crossed from History into Legend.

Diodorus [115] then describes the ‘funeral pyre’. It is made from the torn down wall of the city – 10 stadia, over 2,000 yards/metres, about 1.25 miles/2 km. This demolition has to be brick-by-brick if they are to be re-used. The walls would have been of baked mud-brick outer and inner, with rubble fill, as were all such walls. This material was way insufficient to even build the ground floor, with its 30 ‘compartments’. This was supposedly roofed with palm log trunks, the only other building material available around Babylon – and as shown earlier, an impossible number of these were required to roof the structure, nor could 30 compartments, which if square like the exterior, were 109.5 ft or so square, too big to be covered by 50 foot long x 1yard diameter palm logs ! Already, Diodorus’ structure is physically impossible. It would have to have been divided into 120 compartments, requiring even more quantities of mud-bricks. Note that it is specifically a mud-brick structure, not a timber one. Conceivably the ‘compartments’ could run the full length of the structure, and be some 20 ft or so wide, and therefore ‘spannable’ by the Date Palm roof-logs which would rest on the walls, with a central support wall.....but that means 200 yds x 31 walls plus 2x 200 yards of end walls = 6,600 yards of wall on the ground floor alone.....nowhere near enough material again.....

Then consider:
1. This structure was to have been 200 yds/metres square on the ground ( the size of a city block), and 7 ‘stories’ in height, totalling some 200 ft or so, or 20 stories or more. Compare this to the Etemananki Ziggurat, which stood over Babylon, the fabled ‘Tower of Babel’ possibly. This was supposedly 91 m x 91m x 91 m high, also seven stories, and took 80-100 years to build, or re-build, and may not ever have been completely finished. So Hephaistion’s ‘funeral pyre’ was to have a base 4 times the size of this, but only two-thirds the height, but was to be ‘hollow’ rather than solid (as the Etemenanki was). In 331 BC, Alexander captured Babylon and ordered repairs to the Etemenanki, as his predecessors had done ( being crumbly mud-brick, it needed constant repair – as in Egypt, Alexander shrewdly did what was expected of the ruler to gain loyalty from the local population); when he returned to the ancient city in 323 BC, he noted that no progress had been made, and ordered his army to clear the site of loose rubble, and assemble materials for repairs. This alone took 10,000 men over two months.
2. The decoration of the ‘pyre’ as described by D.S. was also impossible. The decoration of the ground floor alone allegedly involved the ‘sacrifice’ of 240 quinqueremes, whose cut–off bows were to be covered in gold. Alexander never possessed this many ‘fives ’in total and in fact there were just two such vessels at Babylon when Alexander died ( see my post page 3 April 4th)
3. So we have an impossible structure, insufficient materials to build it, and way insufficient time ( six- eight months or so ) to build it, and insufficient time and materials to even build the decorations, prior to Alexander’s death – in D.S. and other sources (e.g. Aelian previously referred to) he is present at the funeral, sacrificing armour and other artifacts on the pyre, and ‘deifying ’Hephaestion.

The cost of this proposed structure is said to be 10-12,000 Talents, some 5-6% of Alexander’s total ‘capital’ ( all sources give figures of around 200,000 Talents total for Alexander’s loot.) Diodorus tells us at XVIII.4.2 that Perdiccas got the ‘completion’ of Hephaistion’s ‘pyre’, along with a lot of other grandiose projects ( The ‘Last Plans’ ), all of which were probably exaggerated in scope after Alexander’s death – most were impossible – cancelled.

What then are we to make of all this? Diodorus starts by describing preparations for the funeral [114.4]. He then breaks off to write an ‘ecphrasis’, a rhetorical exercise which Hellenistic students practised writing, of the fanciful structure itself, and then returns to the actual funeral at [115.5] when we are told that the funeral serves as the occasion of Hephaestion’s ‘deification’. The account finishes with another impossible rhetorical flourish – the sacrifice of 10,000 animals. (see my post p.3 Tue April 2nd).

Now we might conclude that there is a simple answer to this confusion. An actual funeral took place ( almost certainly in Ecbatana ), and Diodorus ’pyra’ in Babylon is a description of a subsequent intended permanent mud-brick monument, which was never built.( see e.g. Plutarch who ascribes the expenditure to the funeral and subsequent tomb [Alexander 72])

Unfortunately there are indications that D’s source meant the description of this structure to be an exaggerated rhetorical account of the ACTUAL ‘pyre’. First the usage of the word itself – only used in poetry, not in normal prose, to describe a funeral earth mound/monument - implies the real pyre. Then the description of the hollow sirens, to be used by singers lamenting the dead, and the sacrifice of Persian and Macedonian arms are more redolent of a real pyre, than a monument.

Nevertheless, the best explanation is a conflation in D’s source, likely the epic description of the funerals in Epihippus’ work on the subject, of the actual funeral, and proposed monument, grossly exaggerated beyond the realms of reality, which was never built of course, as the sources, taken together, imply.
Paralus put it pithily thus:

A more mundane solution is available. A funerary pyre, of far more realistic magnitude, was constructed and Hephaestion cremated. This was not overly newsworthy and so did not make it much past the obituaries scroll in the Oikoumene Times. The notices in both Arrian and Plutarch denoting intention to spend 10-12,000 talents refer to a permanent "temple" to Hephaestion. Diodorus' source for book 18 notes that this was rejected after the conqueror's death along with a similarly costly monument to Philip II. Diodorus did not make up from whole cloth the story found at 17.115 and nor is there any cogent reason for postulating exaggeration on the Sicilian's behalf. He has taken this story from his source and has, if anything, summarised it down to its most sensational aspects. Diodorus' source, by error or design, has either conflated the funerary cremation and the subsequent monument or gone with exaggeration and sensationalism for effect. I rather suspect the opportunity was too good to pass up and Diodorus' source for 17.115 has given the story the News of The Oikoumene treatment.

...And that is pretty much what I have always believed also......

[delos13]

I thank everybody so much for such an interesting discussion. I followed it with great interest and it was very educational for me. Reading most of the posts I was vividly reminded of the age old adagio - be careful what you wish for, because I never anticipated, asking my question, to get these kinds of responses. What is my opinion now? Well, I have to admit, I think my feelings are very much the same as those of the guests who were present at the famous Callisthenes' speech pro and con Alexander's army (please, don't tell me it never happened either!) - arguments on both sides are very convincing. I think the only way I can deal with this situation is to resort to the help of my "first love" in the field of hobbies - Greek Mythology - it allows its "worshiper" to accept the existence of multiple realities.

Thank you everybody again!

[agesilaos]

Kallisthenes' rhetorical exercise is an interesting challenge; one can see that it could be a development of the Aristotle 'quote' that his nephew was 'eloquent but lacking in common sense' or it could equally be true that the quote is genuine and Kallisthenes was a dumb MF who failed to appreciate his audience The thing is that nothing contradicts the report, it does seem that Kallisthenes was rather fond of his own eloquence and the ability to argue either side is still common fodder at university debating clubs, and it can cause a whole storm of the proverbial brown matter when it appears you have no moral sense. So, as there is no reason to rule the story as impossible on either physical grounds (as there is for the monstrous pyre) nor unlikely, in view of the other evidence we have for Kallisthenes' character we should have to judge it as plausible; not definitely true as it could be a construct based on later judgements of his character clouded by apologia from the Court which would seek to vilify Alexander's victim. This may seem reductive but with Alexander there is so much mythology it pays to be circumspect.

[agesilaos]

Just a note that Paul McKechnie's paper, 'Diodorus and Hephaistion's Pyre', Classical Quarterly 45 no2, 1995 pp418-432, is available on JSTOR freeview, just register onsite and one can read upto three papers but they remain on the shelf for fourteen days (I think) preventing further papers being read until these days have elapsed.

I do not entirely concur with his reasoning (he fails to notice that Arrian only mentions a planned funeral in Babylon, for instance) but is generally sensible.

[Alexias]

Thank you for the link. I have a pdf of the article if anyone wants it.

[system1988]

Thank you for the link. I have a pdf of the article if anyone wants it.

Can you send it to me please ?

[Alexias]

Certainly

[Taphoi]

Paul McKechnie’s article on “Diodorus Siculus and Hephaestion’s Pyre” has some merits:

1) He recognises “with reluctance” that Diodorus’ pyre structure “can be made plausible” (thus he finds nothing implausible in the scale of the construction and does not raise bone reclamation as at issue – for everyone at the funeral would have seen exactly where the corpse fell to earth when the pyre collapsed during the blaze.)
2) He shows by calculation that the number of bricks from 10 stades of Babylonian wall is consistent with a foundation structure for a pyre one stade square (I similarly calculate that it yielded precisely the right amount of material for a foundation platform a few metres deep)
3) He realises that it is absurd to suppose that the wooden burnt pyre in Diodorus 17.115 is the same as the planned pyra monument in the Last Plans (Diodorus 18.4)
4) He recognises that sufficient time elapsed (he says 8 months – I would say 6) for a wooden pyre to have been constructed on the specified scale. He states: “If on the other hand the thing under discussion is a pyre, which is essentially only a heap of firewood, it ceases to be axiomatic that a long time would be required to set it up.”
5) He may be right that the description of the pyre came from Ephippus, who would have been an eyewitness (although Diodorus got it from Cleitarchus, the latter may well have used Ephippus.)

However, he makes many mistakes:

A) He notices that Plutarch in his life of Alexander 72 and Aelian VH 7.8 mention Alexander having torn down the battlements of the walls of Ecbatana and other cities and he supposes that this is evidence that the funeral took place at Ecbatana, because he has not noticed that Plutarch, Pelopidas 34 states: “…Alexander the Great, when Hephaistion died, not only cut off the manes of his horses and mules, but even demolished the battlements of city walls in order to show the cities in mourning and make them present a shorn and dishevelled appearance in place of their former beauty.” The battlement damage (presumably removal of crenellations) therefore had no connection with the construction of the pyre in Babylon and Plutarch himself refutes any such connection. Nor was the battlement damage limited to Ecbatana anyway.
B) He thinks that Lucian, Slander 17 in writing that Agathocles of Samos wept at the taphos of Hephaistion provides evidence that a tomb of Hephaistion existed in Alexander’s lifetime, but in fact taphos can mean the funeral feast or funeral ceremony as well as the grave, so Lucian could equally be saying that Agathocles wept at the funeral. Anyway, the place where the remains of Hephaistion were kept pending the funeral and the completion of the monument could have been referred to as a taphos (albeit a temporary one.)
C) He supposes that Ptolemy, despite being an eyewitness, was led to adopt a false story of a funeral in Babylon by using the account of Ephippus instead of his own memory! He writes: “It is not necessary to assume that Ptolemy (though an eyewitness) could not adopt an idea of Ephippus’ if he thought it a good one… [Ephippus’] book, available in Egypt, induced Ptolemy I to concur with the story of a funeral in Babylon.” Either McKechnie is wrong or Ptolemy was in an advanced state of dementia when he wrote: this wild supposition, if at all valid (which it is not), would undermine the entire credibility of Arrian (who based his work largely on Ptolemy). Is this “sensible” I wonder?
D) He writes that: “It may well seem odd that on this point, the location of the funeral in Babylon, Arrian and Diodorus should be combined against the massed ranks of vulgate writers.” In fact it is indeed extremely odd, because it is a matter of fact that no other writer from antiquity (let alone a vulgate writer) says anything that in any way suggests that Hephaistion’s funeral did not take place a Babylon. Furthermore Diodorus is himself the very heart of the Cleitarchan vulgate and Arrian states that it was “agreed by all” ancient writers that Alexander ordered a funeral for Hephaistion in Babylon.
E) He thinks it implausible that Alexander would have levelled 10 stades of the walls of Babylon. However, firstly Alexander was the most successful besieger in history and consequently had only moderate respect for the efficacy of fortifications. Secondly we hear that other buildings in Babylon were in a state of great disrepair/collapse, so there is no reason that this did not extend to the centuries-old walls (Alexander’s destruction could have been the first step in a repair programme.) Thirdly, Babylon had multiple layers of fortifications and there were two or three concentric walls in each line, so the destruction of one line did not necessarily significantly undermine the defensibility of the whole. Fourthly, McKechnie himself makes play of the fact that other sources state that Alexander damaged the walls of “other cities”. Why does McKechnie find it simultaneously plausible of Ecbatana but implausible of Babylon?
F) He thinks that the “30 chambers” from which the pyre was constructed were arranged in a grid of 5 by 6 rows on the base level. But why would anyone divide an exactly square base into different numbers of divisions in either direction? That it was precisely square is shown by the fact that it had the same number of galley prows on each side. McKechnie has not realised that thirty is 4-squared plus 3-squared plus 2-squared plus 1-squared, so he has not realised that the 30 chambers form the step pyramidal structure that echoed the Babylonian ziggurat and the funeral pyre structure shown on Roman coins.
G) McKechnie does not realise that the precision and evident correctness of the engineering details (30 chambers forming a step pyramid; correct length of wall to build a base of the specified size; correct chamber height of 30 cubits to match the size of a palm trunk…) lend great credence to the description and demonstrate that it is not an “ecphrasis” which exaggerates the original, for such an exaggeration would have upset the engineering correctness of the figures.
H) Despite understanding that pyra can mean the funeral pyre and the tomb/monument, McKechnie has not appreciated that a pyra monument has to be on the same site as the funeral pyre for the term to be used of the monument (which was intended as a permanent representation of the funeral pyre – hence the use of the term!)

Best wishes,

Andrew

[agesilaos]

Lucian 'Calumniae Non Temere Credundum'

17]παρὰ δὲ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ μεγίστη ποτὲ πασῶν ἦν διαβολή, εἰ λέγοιτο τις μὴ σέβειν μηδὲ προσκυνεῖν τὸν Ἡφαιστίωνα: ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἀπέθανεν Ἡφαιστίων, ὑπὸ τοῦ ἔρωτος Ἀλέξανδρος ἐβουλήθη προσθεῖναικαὶ τοῦτο τῇ λοιπῇ μεγαλουργίᾳ καὶ θεὸνχειροτονῆσαι τὸν τετελευτηκότα. εὐθὺς οὖν νεώς τε ἀνέστησαν αἱ πόλεις καὶ τεμένη καθιδρύετο καὶ βωμοὶ καὶ θυσίαι καὶ ἑορταὶ τῷ καινῷ τούτῳ θεῷ ἐπετελοῦντο, καὶ ὁ μέγιστος ὅρκος ἦν ἅπασιν Ἡφαιστίων. εἰ δέ τις ἢ μειδιάσειε πρὸς τὰγινόμενα ἢ μὴ φαίνοιτο πάνυ εὐσεβῶν, θάνατος ἐπέκειτο ἡ ζημία. ὑπολαμβάνοντες δὲ οἱ κόλακες τὴν μειρακιώδη ταύτην τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἐπιθυμίαν προσεξέκαιον εὐθὺς καὶ ἀνεζωπύρουν ὀνείρατα διηγούμενοι τοῦ Ἡφαιστίωνος, ἐπιφανείας τινὰς καὶ ἰάματα προσάπτοντες αὐτῷ καὶ μαντείας[p. 380]ἐπιφημίζοντες: καί τέλος ἔθυον παρέδρῳ καὶ ἀλεξικάκῳ θεῷ. ὁ δὲ Ἀλέξανδρος ἥδετό τε ἀκούων καὶ τᾶ τελευταῖα ἐπίστευε καὶ μέγα ἐφρόνειὡσανεὶ οὐ θεοῦ παῖς ὢν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεοὺςποιεῖν δυνάμενος. πόσους τοίνυν οἰώμεθα τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου φίλων παρὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἐκεῖνον ἀπολαῦσαι τῆς Ἡφαιστίωνος θειότητος, διαβληθένταςὡς οὐ τιμῶσι τὸν κοινὸν ἀπάντων θεόν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐξελαθέντας καὶ τῆς τοῦ βασιλέως εὐνοίας ἐκπεσόντας;

18]τότε καὶ Ἀγαθοκλῆς ὁ Σάμιος ταξιαρχῶν παρ᾽ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ καὶ τιμώμενος παρ᾽αὐτοῦ μικροῦ δεῖν συγκαθείρχθη λέοντι διαβληθεὶς ὅτι δακρύσειε παριὼν τὸν Ἡφαιστίωνος τάφον. ἀλλ᾽ ἐκείνῳ μὲν βοηθῆσαι λέγεται Περδίκκας ἐπομοσάμενος κατὰ πάντων θεῶν καὶ κατὰ Ἡφαιστίωνος, ὅτι δὴ κυνηγετοῦντὶ οἱ φανέντα ἐναργῆ τὸν θεὸν ἐπισκῆψαι εἰπεῖν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ φείσασθαι Ἀγαθοκλέους: οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀπιστοῦνταοὐδὲ ὡς ἐπὶ νεκρῷ δακρῦσαι, ἀλλὰ τῆς πάλαι συνηθείας μνημονεύσαντα.

17. At Alexander's court there was no more fatal imputation than that of refusing worship and adoration to Hephaestion. Alexander had been so fond of him that to appoint him a God after his death was, for such a worker of marvels, nothing out of the way. The various cities at once built temples to him, holy ground was consecrated, altars, offerings and festivals instituted to this new divinity; if a man would be believed, he must swear by Hephaestion. For smiling at these proceedings, or showing the slightest lack of reverence, the penalty was death. The flatterers cherished, fanned, and put the bellows to this childish fancy of Alexander's; they had visions and manifestations of Hephaestion to relate; they invented cures and attributed oracles to him; they did not stop short of doing sacrifice to this God of Help and Protection. Alexander was delighted, and ended by believing in it all; it gratified his vanity to think that he was now not only a God's son, but a God-maker. It would be interesting to know how many of his friends in those days found that what the new divinity did for them was to supply a charge of irreverence on which they might be dismissed and deprived of the King's favour.
18.Agathocles of Samos was a valued officer of his, who very narrowly escaped being thrown into a lion's cage; the offence reported against him was shedding tears as he passed Hephaestion's tomb. The tale goes that he was saved by Perdiccas, who swore, by all the Gods and Hephaestion, that the God had appeared plainly to him as he was hunting, and charged him to bid Alexander spare Agathocles: his tears had meant neither scepticism nor mourning, but been merely a tribute to the friendship that was gone.

All this is utter tosh! When one reads the whole passage it is apparent that it is a confused confection. As in Diodorus, Hephaistion is incorrectly accorded divine rather than heroic honours, the temples, rites etc are fictional, the oaths and contracts based on the Letter to Kleomenes etc.

The otherwise unknown Agathokles is threatened with the fictional punishment of the real Agathokles' son, Lysimachos. The passage clearly means that Agathokles shed tears at a tomb and not during the funeral rites; he is described as 'pariwn' – passing by – whilst Alexander's preciousness around Hephaistion is overdrawn (to suit the source's picture of Oriental excess, no doubt) any officer (taxiarch) 'passing-by' the actual funeral would have to have ball-bearings for gonads, that fudge does not wash. A tomb is meant and since there was explicitly not one in Babylon, according to other sources, McKechnie has assumed that it must have been in Ekbatana. Sadly, a monument imagined in Ekbatana has no more force than one imagined in Babylon. McKechnie has fallen into a bad habit he himself deplores elsewhere, cherry-picking details from essentially worthless material.

He does not accept the plausibility of the monument described by Diodorus only that a simple pyre would not have proved a problem. I shall leave it to others correct the remaining misrepresentations and misapprehensions.

[Paralus]

Paul McKechnie’s article on “Diodorus Siculus and Hephaestion’s Pyre” has some merits:

I see you have finally read this. It is a good thing that others on this forum are able to provide you with the relevant scholarship on the subject. On that paper, it does indeed have some merits, amongst which is the following:

D.S. 17.115 is fiction, describing a pyre which was not built - only the monument was planned for Babylon, and that, thanks to Perdiccas, was eventually not built either.

More pertinent is the following:

As a matter of literary variation, Diodorus stops giving numbers after the fifth storey (this is presumably the origin of the misconception) - but that should not stop the reader from counting. He follows on with 'the next part up', plus 'and over all'.

It has clearly stopped Taphoi from counting:

Hence we are looking at thirty chambers of base 100 cubits square and a height of thirty cubits. 16 were arrayed in a 4x4 configuration in the first stage, 9 in the second, 4 in the third and one at the summit. The body and its support probably gave the last 10 cubits and there may have been banners.Each stage was split into two bands of decoration, so these were 15 cubits high (as stated by Diodorus)...

This is to completely misread Diodorus as pointed out earlier in the thread and also by McKechnie above. Firstly, Diodorus claims that the area (τόπον - 17.115.1) for the pyre was leveled. He then states that the same cleared area (τόπον - 115.2) was divided into thirty compartments. Nothing is explicitly said about these compartments being made into the pyre's differing levels - nice though the mathematics might seem. Secondly, in an artful massaging of the text to fit the evidence to the theory, Taphoi claims that these levels were divided into "bands" of decoration - two per "stage". Diodorus, though, clearly describes seven levels and nothing whatsoever substantiates a reading of "two bands" per "stage". Further, and contrary to Taphoi's baseless assertion, Diodorus nowhere states that such postulated "bands of decoration" were each 15 cubits high. He does write, incontrovertibly, that "on the second level, stood torches fifteen cubits high". This means nothing more than the torches he's describing were this high in exactly the same manner that the archers and marines on the preceding level were four and five cubits respectively. Supposition aplenty.

This all smacks of reading to a purpose. Of course, as Xenophon pointed out earlier in the thread, that purpose is the defense of a position already decided. I note the addition of an appendix on Hephaestion's pyre in "Alexander's Lovers". I have not read it but, going on this thread, do not need to.