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......