pothos.org

An interesting study of the Alexander sources. A dark Alexander and even a darker Hephaestion (Appendix V).

https://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handl ... sAllowed=y

Sorry, I can't open the link!

Sorry about it. It is a long document, which takes forever to load. Given below is a link that summarizes the dissertation - https://www.historyoftheancientworld.co ... e_vignette

Thank you very much.
I tried over and over, and in the end I succeeded in seeing the whole document. Till now I read only the Appendix V "Hephaestion": it seems to me not so dark as I feared and not so new as I wished. When I'll read the rest I'll tell what I think of this study.
Best regards
hiphys

I read Appendix V and I think she has muddled the Eumenes and Craterus quarrels slightly. There is a possibility that Hephaestion got Alexander to change his mind over the Eumenes quarrel about the lodging, as he originally blamed Hephaestion, but then decided Eumenes had overstepped the mark. However, Hephaestion was not the only one of Alexander's friends to convince him that Philotas should not be forgiven. He couldn't guarantee that Alexander would give him the vacant command, but Philotas had obviously made himself quite a few enemies.

She muddled the story as Mary Renault had done so in her fictional work ‘The Persian Boy.’ Initially, I thought that Renault was taking poetic license for dramatic purposes by (a) situating the story much closer to Ecbatana and (b) making Hephaestion and Eumenes draw the swords on each other instead of Craterus and H. (In her version, Craterus had already gone back with the discharged veterans when the infamous fight broke out.) However, she doubled down on it in her non-fiction work ‘The Nature of Alexander.’ As the dissertation analyzes Renault’s works on Alexander, the author went with this version. I have seen Renault’s version of the sword fight echoed in several places, attesting to her enduring legacy.

Interesting - I hadn't realised that. Just goes to show how careful writers need to be about myth-making,