did alexander the great have any children, how many did he have?

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2004

Answers

i dont know if he had any children but you should really agree because i am trying to show some people that he was bisexual. if he had children he was but thanks for your guy's help!

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2004

Bagoas was WAY COOL! I use a version of my own name, MarcAngelo, as a "stage" name @ D.C.'s male dancer clubs, but LOVE Bagoas' winning of the dance contest, Alexander's kiss, and would have taken the name "Bagoas" if I didn't figure it'd be an arrogant call to (1) associate myself with a famous historical persona, (2) "piggy-back" on Mary Renault's marvelous book, and (3)suggest myself as more than I am. (That DOESN'T mean I DON'T fantasize about being Bagoas ... save I SURE AM GLAD that nowadays they want to see you with ALL of your "equipment"!)

... Marco.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2004

YES HE DID! Thats one of the reasons there was a big hoo-hah after he died. He had two sons from two wives the trouble was they werent born when he died so no one knew who to give the crown to.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2004

yes lots of them. mostly in his tent or palace at bedtime when he fucked them goog.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2004

Yes, Alexander had children but none who survived long after his death with the exception of Roxanne's son, ALexander IV, who was then murdered at about the age of 14 by Cassander. Statiera, his Persian wife, was pregnant when she was murdered (possibly by Roxanne and Perdikkas). No daughters are claimed to have been born.

There are *myths* regarding other children, including one by an "Amazon" queen, one by an Indian queen etc.

There is also a claim that Heracles, a son of Thais, was sired by Alexander, but this is disputed.

The fact is, that no son of Alexander survived to adulthood. But the fact that he sired children in no way diminishes the relationship between Alexander and Hephastion, nor does it deny the Bagoas relationship. It merely tells us that Alexander acted as a king was required, though late in life, and as his own inclinations took him- he was a product of his own world, culture, time and place, not the modern world.

Regards, Sikander

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2004

NO HE DIDN'T

Rumors have been circulating that Oliver Stone has been thinking of doing a movie on the life of the legendary son of king Phillip II of Macedon and queen Olympias, the proud Epirote girl he fell in love with at the Samothracian Mysteries in 358 bce. Only one obstacle to this project has presented itself: the Greek government. It does not want the name of one of their greatest heroes of antiquity to be ‘besmirched’ by public knowledge of his passion for male love and his indifference to the fair sex.

Alexander was famed not only for his almost superhuman military exploits (After commanding his first battles while still a young teenager he went on to conquer the entire known world, leading his troops from the mountains of northern Greece all the way to the borderlands of India, subduing every opponent in his path, from the Greek city states to the kingdoms of North Africa, Asia Minor and Persia), or for his ruthlessness in battle, often tempered by his magnanimity to the vanquished, but also for his devotion to his friends and companions, for the love which he shared almost exclusively with his male peers from earliest childhood on.

This was no chance event. Born in August of 356 bce, under the sign of the lion, he was the quintessential product of a patriarchal warrior culture, the very paragon of a male dominated world ruled by masculine values and a masculine aesthetic. His tutor from the tender age of seven on was the philosopher Aristotle, who documented the excesses as well as the values of pederasty. Alexander was to embody those values for the rest of his brief but volcanic life, and even to stretch the accepted boundaries of ancient male love by living out his great romance with a man his own age, his childhood friend Hephaiston.

What may seem normal to us today, the love of one man for another, in ancient days was frowned upon as a threat to the structure of society, one in which adult men were expected to pair off with teenage boys in order to educate them and lead them into adulthood, held close by the power of erotic love. Alexander surely had his share of young loves, pedagogic or not, nor was he blind to the lure of beautiful women: he married Roxane, a Persian princess, daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria, and fathered a child with her. Later, as the Greek historian Arrian reports, Alexander, while in Persia, at Susa “… held wedding ceremonies for his Companions; he also took a [second] wife himself — Barsine, Darius’ eldest daughter, and, according to Aristobulus, another as well, namely Parysatis, the youngest daughter of Ochlus…”[VII.5] Whether these marriages were for political, or amorous gain, or both, is open to debate.

The other great love of Alexander’s life was the eunuch Bagoas. The two met while Alexander was on campaign against king Darius of the Persians. The war had raged for some time, with Darius finally on the run and deserted by more and more of his vassals, until he was finally assassinated by one of his own men. His general, Nabarzenes, was among the last to leave, and when he went he took the young Bagoas, dancer, musician, and favorite of the fallen king. His reason for taking the youth was soon apparent — Nabarzenes went to swear fealty to Alexander, and to offer rich gifts, among which the beautiful boy who, we are told, went from being the lover of one king to being the lover of another. Though Alexander had been offered beautiful slave boys before, he had always refused them and taken the offer as affront. This time however the character of the boy matched his good looks, and the friendship which grew between him and the warrior king was to last the rest of their lives. That this is no idle supposition is attested to by many historians of the time, among whom Plutarch, who accompanied Alexander on that campaign and reported that a couple of years later, after a dancing contest in which Bagoas had won the honors, Alexander beckoned to him and sat him by his side. “At which the Macedonian troops shouted out, telling him to kiss him, till finally he took him in his arms and kissed him warmly.”

This new love in no way affected the deep devotion which bound him to Hephaiston, which was undone only by the latter’s death during the summer festivities at Ecbatana, in Persia, on their way home from India. Alexander, who till then had borne without breaking stride hardship and wounds that would have felled a lesser man, was undone by this loss. It is said that he lay upon Hephaiston’s body for a day and a night, and finally had to be dragged off by his friends. For another three days he remained mute, in tears, fasting. When he rose it was to shear off all his hair, and to order to have all the ornaments in the city taken off the walls. Finally he forbade all music in the city, and ordered every town in the empire to carry out mourning rituals. Later he was to send envoys to Ammon’s oracle at the oasis of Siwah in Egypt to ask for divine honors to be granted to his dead friend. The body of Hephaiston was embalmed and carried on to Babylon to be burned on a funeral pyre. Little did Alexander know that Babylon was to become his final stop as well. Forced to stay in the town through the hot, mosquito-ridden summer months he took sick and died after a short illness. By our accounting the year was 323 bce. Alexander was 33 years old.

Mary Renault, The Nature of Alexander, Pantheon, 1976

Yalouris Nikolaos et al., The Search for Alexander, New York Graphic Society, 1980.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2004