References to Hephaestion in the sources
Our knowledge of Hephaestion is limited to his appearances in the Alexander sources
Lucian A slip of the tongue
Eumenes of Cardia, writing to Antipater, states that just8 before the battle of Issus, Hephaestion came at dawn into Alexander's tent. Either in absence of mind and confusion like mine, or else under a divine impulse, he gave the evening salutation like me--'Hail, sire; ’tis time we were at our posts.' All present were confounded at the irregularity, and Hephaestion himself was like to die of shame, when Alexander said, 'I take the omen; it is a promise that we shall come back safe from battle.'
Arrian
I.12.1 When Alexander reached Troy Menoetius the pilot crowned him with a golden wreath and then Chares the Athenian arrived from Sigeum with others, Greeks or natives of the place … Some say that Alexander crowned the tomb of Achilles, while Hephaestion, others say, placed a wreath on Patroclus’ tomb; and Alexander, so the story goes, blessed Achilles for having Homer to proclaim his fame to posterity,
II.12.6-8 … there is, however, a story that next day Alexander himself visited the tent with Hephaestion and no other Companion; and Darius’ mother, not knowing which of the two was the king, as both were dressed alike, approached Hephaestion and did him obeisance, since he appeared the taller. Hephaestion drew back, and one of her attendants pointed to Alexander and said that he was the king; she drew back in confusion at her mistake, but Alexander remarked that she had made no mistake, for Hephaestion was also an Alexander. I have written this down without asserting its truth or total incredibility. If it really happened, I approve of Alexander’s compassion for the women and of the trust and honour bestowed on his companion. If the historians of Alexander think it plausible that he would have acted and spoken in this way, I approve of Alexander on that ground too.
III.5.2 There about sixty of the Companions of Alexander fell, and Hephaestion himself, Coenus and Menidas were wounded. Still, Alexander overcame these enemies also.
III.27.4 Alexander now put two hipparchs in charge of the Companions, Hephaestion son of Amyntor and Clitus son of Dropides, and after dividing the Companions’ brigade into two parts, since he would not have wished a single man, though his closest friend, to command so large a body of cavalry, especially as it was the best of all his mounted force in reputation and valour he arrived among the people formerly called Ariaspians …
IV.22.7-8 Here he divided his army, and sent Hephaestion and Perdiccas to the territory of Peucalaotis towards the river Indus, with the battalions of Gorgias, Clitus and Meleager, half of the Companion cavalry and all the mercenary cavalry, with instructions to take by storm or receive in surrender all towns on their march; when they had reached the Indus, they were to get everything ready for the crossing of the river. Taxilas and the other hyparchs were sent with them. They arrived at the river Indus and carried out Alexander’s instructions. But Astis, the hyparch of the district of Peucalaotis, attempted revolt, and perished himself, besides involving in ruin the city to which he had fled for refuge; for Hephaestion and his troops captured it after a siege of thirty days. Astis himself was put to death and Sangaeus appointed to govern the city; he had previously escaped from Astis and gone over to Taxilas; this guaranteed his loyalty to Alexander. [IV.23.1] Taking the hypaspists, all the Companion cavalry not detailed with Hephaestion, and the battalions of the so-called asthetairoi, with the archers, Agrianians, and mounted javelin-men, Alexander advanced to the district of the Aspasians, Guraeans and Assacenians.
IV.28.5 He made Ora and Massaga into forts to control the district, and fortified Bazira as a city. Hephaestion, Perdiccas and their men fortified another city for him, called Orobatis, and leaving a garrison there went on towards the river Indus; on arrival, they were engaged in following all Alexander’s instructions for bridging the Indus.
IV.30.9 He also found a wood good for felling near the river, and had it cut down by his troops, and ships built, which went down the river Indus to the bridge Hephaestion and Perdiccas had built for Alexander long before.
V.3.5 On arriving at the river Indus, Alexander found a bridge made over it by Hephaestion, and many smaller boats as well as two triacontoroi …
V.12.2 Alexander himself selected the agema of the Companions, the hipparchies of Hephaestion, Perdiccas and Demetrius, the cavalry from Bactria and Sogdiana and the Scythian horsemen, with the Dahae, mounted archers, and from the phalanx of infantry the shield-bearing guards, the brigades of Clitus and Coenus, with the archers and Agrianians, and made a secret march, keeping far away from the bank of the river, in order not to be seen marching towards the island and headland, from which he had determined to cross.
V.21.5 Here he despatched Hephaestion, giving him part of the army, two phalanxes of foot-soldiers and his own and Demetrius’ hipparchies of cavalry with half the archers, to the country of the rebellious Porus, with orders to hand it over to the other Porus, together with any independent Indian tribes dwelling by the banks of the Hydaspes; these too he was to win over and entrust them to Porus to govern.
V.29.2-3 After crossing it, he went back again to the Acesines, and there he found the city already built which he had instructed Hephaestion to fortify …
VI.2.2 He divided the army as follows. He embarked on the ships with himself all the hypaspists, the archers, the Agrianians, and the agema of cavalry. Craterus led a division of the infantry and the cavalry along the right bank of the Hydaspes. Hephaestion advanced along the other bank in command of the largest and strongest part of the army and the elephants, of which there were now some two hundred; this force was under orders to make at full speed for the capital of Sopithes.
VI.4.1-2 Sailing in this way, on the third day Alexander put in at a place where orders had been given to both Hephaestion and Craterus to camp, though on opposite banks. There he stayed for two days, and when Philip joined him with the rest of the army, he sent him to the river Acesines with the troops he had brought, with orders to march along the bank of the Acesines. The troops with Craterus and Hephaestion were sent on again with instructions as to their route, while he himself sailed on down the river Hydaspes, which was never narrower during the descent than twenty stades.
VI.5.5-6 Here Hephaestion and Craterus and Philip with their troops joined him again. Alexander put the elephants, Polyperchon’s battalion, the mounted archers and Philip with his army across the river Hydaspes, and ordered Craterus to take command of them; Nearchus was sent with the fleet and ordered to proceed three days in advance of the army down stream. Alexander divided the remaining forces into three parts; Hephaestion was ordered to go on five days ahead, so that any who fled from his own force and moved rapidly ahead would fall in with Hephaestion’s troops and be captured, while Ptolemy son of Lagus, to whom he also handed over part of the army, was told to follow him at an interval of three days, so that any who turned back again, fleeing from himself, might fall in with Ptolemy and his troops.
VI.13.1 On consideration of this, to prevent any disturbance in the army, Alexander was conveyed as soon as he was able to the bank of the river Hydraotes, and sailed downstream, as the camp was at the junction of the Hydraotes and Acesines, where Hephaestion was in command of the army and where Nearchus had his fleet …
VI.17.4 The rest of his forces which were not sailing in his company downstream to the sea were divided in two; the largest part was put under the command of Hephaestion; Pithon with the mounted javelin-men and the Agrianians were put across on the side of the Indus opposite to that by which Hephaestion was to take his army, with orders to muster inhabitants for the cities already fortified and, if any rebellion were to break out among the Indians in these parts, to establish order and finally meet him at Patala.
VI.18.1 Alexander ordered Hephaestion to fortify the citadel in Patala, and sent out men to the desert in the adjoining country to dig wells and to make the country inhabitable. Some of the neighbouring tribesmen set upon them and destroyed a number by the suddenness of their attack, but they also lost many of their own people …
VI.20.1 Hephaestion was now ordered to get ready everything necessary for fortifying the ship-station and building the dockyards …
VI.21.3 Hephaestion was put in command of the force left behind …
VI.21.5 For the time being, Alexander encamped near a small sheet of water, but when Hephaestion and his troops had come close he advanced further. Arriving at the largest village of the Oritans, called Rhambacia, he expressed admiration of the site and thought that, if people were settled together in a city there, it would become great and prosperous. Hephaestion then was left behind to attend to this.
VI.22.3 Then Alexander himself with the larger part of his army, for Hephaestion had arrived with the men left behind, proceeded towards the Gadrosians, through country that was mostly desert.
VI.28.4 … while up to this time Alexander’s bodyguards were seven in number, Leonnatus son of Anteas, Hephaestion son of Amyntor, Lysimachus son of Agathocles, Aristonous son of Pisaeus, all from Pella, Perdiccas son of Orontes from Orestis, Ptolemy son of Lagus and Pithon son of Crateuas from Eordaea, an eighth was now added – Peucestas who had protected Alexander with his shield.
VI.28.7 Alexander despatched Hephaestion with the largest part of the army, the baggage train and elephants along the sea-coast from Carmania to Persia; as his expedition was in winter, the coastal parts of Persia were then sunny and well supplied with all necessaries.
VII.4.5 To Hephaestion he gave Drypetis, another daughter of Darius, sister to his own wife (for he desired Hephaestion’s children to be cousins to his own) …
VII.5.6 Next he decorated Nearchus for his coasting voyage from India by the great sea (Nearchus too had now arrived at Susa) and next, Onesicritus, the helmsman of the royal ship; and in addition Hephaestion and the other bodyguards.
VII.7.1 Alexander ordered Hephaestion to take most of the infantry force to the Persian Sea and, now that his fleet had put in to Susian land, embarked himself …
VII.7.6 After sailing by sea along the whole length of the coast of the Persian gulf between the Eulaeus and the Tigris, Alexander sailed up the Tigris to the camp where Hephaestion had encamped with all his force.
VII.13.1 [following lacuna] It is said that Hephaestion was prevailed on by this argument to make up his quarrel with Eumenes, though with a reluctance Eumenes did not share.
VII.14.1 At Ecbatana Alexander offered a sacrifice, as he usually did after some successful event, and held athletic and musical games and drinking bouts with the Companions. At this time Hephaestion fell ill, and his illness had run seven days, they say, when the race-course was filled with people, as there were athletic sports that day for boys; but when Alexander heard that Hephaestion was seriously ill, he left the course and hurried to him, but found him no longer living.
VII.14.2 At this point indeed historians have given varied accounts of Alexander’s grief. That it was great, all have related; as to the actions it occasioned, they differ according to the good-will or malice each felt towards Hephaestion of even towards Alexander himself.
VII.14.3 The writers who have recounted his excesses appear to me to have thought either that anything redounds to Alexander’s credit that he did or said in extremity of grief for the dearest of his friends, or that all was to his discredit, since it was not becoming either for a king or for Alexander. Some say that for the greater part of that day he lay prostrate and weeping on his companion’s body and would not be parted, till he was actually carried away by the Companions,
VII.14.4 others that he lay prostrate on the body all day and all night, others again that he hanged Glaucias the doctor, and that for a drug wrongly given, or alternatively because Glaucias had seen Hephaestion drinking most immoderately and had not stopped him. I regard it as not unlikely that Alexander cut off his hair over the corpse, especially considering his emulation of Achilles, with whom he had a rivalry from boyhood.
VII.14.5 Some add that Alexander himself for a time drove the car in which the body was borne, but I regard this statement as quite incredible. Yet others tell us that he ordered the temple of Asclepius at Ecbatana to be razed to the ground, but this would have been barbaric, and not at all characteristic of Alexander, but more suitable to Xerxes’ presumption towards heaven and the fetters they say he let down into the Hellespont, in the belief he could punish it.
VII.14.6 But there is also a story recorded which I think not wholly beyond the bounds of likelihood, that when Aleander was going to Babylon many emissaries from Greece met him on the way, including Epidaurian envoys; they obtained from Alexander what they sued for, and Alexander gave them a votive offering to take back to Asclepius, adding: ‘Yet Asclepius has not been kind to me, in failing to save for me the comrade whom I valued as much as my life.’
VII.14.7 Most authorities have recorded that he ordered that the kind of sacrifice appropriate to a hero should always be offered to Hephaestion; some say that he sent to the oracle of Ammon to enquire of the god if he permitted Hephaestion to receive the kind of sacrifice appropriate to a god, but that the oracle refused permission.
VII.14.8 The following, however, harmonizes in all accounts, that for two days after Hephaestion’s death Alexander tasted no food and took no care of his body, but lay either moaning or in a sorrowful silence, that he ordered a pyre to be made ready for him in Babylon at a cost of ten thousand Talents (by some accounts, even more)
VII.14.9 and commanded mourning throughout the whole barbarian country; and that many of Alexander’s Companions in respect for him dedicated themselves and their arms to the dead Hephaestion; and that the first to initiate this expedient was Eumenes, of whose quarrel with Hephaestion we spoke a little earlier, and that he did this to prevent Alexander thinking that he rejoiced at Hephaestion’s death.
VII.14.10 At any rate Alexander never appointed anyone in place of Hephaestion as chiliarch over the Companions’ cavalry, so that the name of Hephaestion might never be lost to the unit; the chiliarchy was still called Hephaestion’s, and the standard went before it which had been made by his order. Alexander also planned athletic and musical games far more splendid than any before in the number of competitions and the cost of production; he provided three thousand performers in all. Those were the men, it is said, who competed a little later at Alexander’s burial.
VII.16.8 In fact the death of Hephaestion had proved a great misfortune to Alexander himself, and Alexander, I believe, would have preferred to have gone first himself rather than experience it during his lifetime, just as I think Achilles would have preferred to die before Patroclus rather than to have been the avenger of his death.
VII.18.2-3 Pithagoras wrote in answer asking who it was that he [Apollodorus of Amphipolis] chiefly feared that he wanted the help of prophecy, and he replied that it was king himself and Hephaestion. Pithagoras then sacrificed first in regard to Hephaestion and, as the lobe could not be seen on the liver of the victim, he reported this, and sealing his letter sent it to Apollodorus from Babylon to Ecbatana, showing that he had nothing to fear from Hephaestion, as in a short time he would be out of their way. Apollodorus received this letter, Aristobulus says, on the day before Hephaestion died …
VII.23.6-8 The sacred envoys from Ammon also arrived, whom Alexander had sent to enquire what honour it was lawful to pay Hephaestion; they reported that Ammon said that it was lawful to sacrifice to him as a hero. Alexander was pleased with the oracle and henceforward gave him heroic honours. Cleomenes, as rascal who had been guilty of many wrongful acts in Egypt, was sent a letter which I personally censure, not for its affectionate recollection of Hephaestion even in death but for many other reasons; it said that a hero’s shrine was to be built in Egyptian Alexandria, not just in the city itself but actually on the isle of Pharos, where the tower stands on the island; it was to be unparalleled in dimensions and sumptuous splendour, and he was to insist that it be called after Hephaestion, and that his name should be written into the contracts by which traders do business with each other. All this I cannot censure, except in so far as he was showing such great care over matters of no great importance. But what follows I do censure strongly. The letter ran: ‘If I find these temples set in good order in Egypt, and these shrines of Hephaestion, whatever wrong you have hitherto done, I pardon it; and for the future, of whatever nature your fault may be, you shall receive no harm at my hands.’ I cannot approve this mandate from a great king to a man who was ruling a large and populous area, all the more as the man was wicked.
Arrian Indica
XVIII.1-3 When the fleet was made ready for Alexander on the banks of the Hydaspes, he picked out all the Phoenicians, Cypriotes and Egyptians who had followed the expedition up-country and used them to man his ships, picking out for their crews and rowers all who were skilled in seafaring. There were also a good many islanders in the army, practiced in these things, and Ionians and Hellespontines. As trierarchs he appointed the following Macedonians: Hephaestion son of Amyntor, Leonnatus son of Eunous, Lysimachus son of Agathocles, Asclepiodorus son of Timander, Archon son of Clinias, Demonicus son of Athenaeus, Archias son of Anaxidotus, Ophellas son of Silenus, Timathes son of Pantiades, all from Pella.
XIX.1-4 When everything had been made ready for him to start the voyage, he ordered Craterus to march along one side of the Hydaspes with an army of cavalry and infantry; Hephaestion had already started on the other, with another army even bigger than that under Craterus. Hephaestion took with him the elephants, number about two hundred. Alexander himself took with him the so-called hypastists, all the archers, and that part of the cavalry called ‘Companions’, in all about eight thousand. Craterus and Hephaestion with their forces had been instructed where they were to await the fleet after marching ahead.
Compiled by Amyntoros and Marcus