Posted on 11/26/2004 8:59:56 AM PST by SusanD
Aristotle’s dictum still stands: “He who asserts must also prove.” When you make a claim, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that claim.
Let’s ask some clear, practical questions in light of Oliver Stone’s Alexander: Did Alexander ever kiss a man on the mouth? No evidence. Did he ever play a passive or active role in same sex sexual unions? No evidence. Did he have sex of any kind with the eunuch Bagoas? No evidence. Did he ever play footsie with men or boys at a sports bar? No evidence. Did he have sex with Hephaestion or any other man, young or old? No evidence. Was he anything other than a married, heterosexual male with children who chose “power as his supreme mistress”? The answer in concert with all the primary sources is again: no evidence!
Alexander clearly distained his father Philip’s alpha male excesses and was considered something of a prig with regard to sexual matters. Interestingly enough, no one who knew them both considered Alexander either in character or in conduct to have followed in his father’s licentious footsteps. Instead it was said of him that “he gave the strange impression of one whose body was his servant.” Alexander stated that his true father figure was Aristotle, for although Philip had given him life, Aristotle had taught him how to live.
What then was Aristotle’s position on such issues. What would Alexander and Hephaestion have learned from their mentor in three years of study? In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes between what is naturally pleasurable from what is pleasurable without being naturally so.
K. J. Dover explains:
“In this latter category he puts (a) things which are pleasurable because of ‘deficiencies’ or ‘impairments’ and those who find them so, (b) things which become pleasurable through habit, and (c) things which are found pleasurable by bad natures.”[xiii]
Dover cites:
“Those who are effeminate by nature … are constituted contrary to nature; for, though male, they are so disposed that part of them (sc the rectum) is necessarily defective. Defect, if complete, causes destruction, but if not, perversion (sc. of one’s nature). … it therefore follows that they must be distorted and have an urge in a place other than (sc. that of) procreative ejaculation.”[xiv]
Dover concludes Aristotle’s thought:
“The writer’s concept of nature is not difficult to understand: a male who is physically constituted in such a way that he lacks something of the positive characteristics which distinguish male from female, and possesses instead a positively female characteristic, suffers from a constitutional defect contrary to nature, and a male who through habituation behaves in a way which is a positive differentia of females behaves as if he had such a defect.”[xv]
Non heterosexual relations are contrary to nature. But again, why should anyone care? Why would Greek lawyers be threatening to sue Oliver Stone and Warner Brothers film studios with an extrajudicial note saying that the movie is fiction and not based on fact? Is it a Bible-thumping, right-wing conspiracy? No, I believe it’s only a concern for truth - clear historical facts versus Hollywood “interpra-facts”. Gay activists say that the film soft-pedals Alexander’s sexuality. Terms such as “erotic reality denyers” and “homophobic Keystone Cops” are used of anyone who dares to challenge that Alexander might actually have been just a heterosexual guy. It is interesting to me that Alexander is not even mentioned in the important studies of homoeroticism in ancient Greece by the likes of Sir Kenneth Dover, (Greek Homosexuality, 1989), John Winkler’s The Constraints of Desire, (1990), and David Halperin’s 100 Years of Homosexuality (1990).
SUMMARY
In short, regardless of the sexual mores of Alexander’s time, coupled with the clear evidence of homoerotic relationships on the part of his father Philip II, at end the question of whether there is evidence in the ancient historians to suggest that Alexander was homosexual, bisexual, homoerotic, or anything else of the sort, just isn’t there.
Personally, I don’t care. I am neither angry nor homophobic. I just appreciate historical evidence when historical claims
I've heard of, though never saw, that movie.
I read a review of the Flight of the Phoenix remake and the reviewer specifically mentioned that it was a typically modern dumbed down version of the 1965 original.
They dumbed down Wings as well. Made it into a mess called City of Angels.
While I'm sure this argument will never be settled, what I find fascinating about Alexander is the strange mixture of noble thought and even sensitivity and an ability to be utterly and unfeelingly ruthless.
Apparently, upon occasion he would order the complete population slaughter of entire cities and towns because the local king or warlord ordered the people not to surrender. How he could order the mass death of innocents doesn't square with the other image of a philosophically trained ruler.
Stone should have tried to explain this characteristic, rather than getting off on the gay theme.
This is modernism's proof that Alexander was a homo?
The passage you refer to was from Plutarch's Morals - About the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great (De Alexandri Magni Fortuna Aut Virtute).
This whole homo myth has no basis whatever in history. Your reference is to a work written 15 generations after Alexander's death. Even so, Alexander is claimed to have severely reproached Philoxenus for offering him up a male lover.
Maybe he is a metrosexual
(Books, you'll recall weren't invented by Plutarch's day).
This whole homo myth has no basis whatever in history.
I have my belief based upon what is known of Alexander's life and those who wish he had been a homo have their belief based upon what they wish.
As I have previously posted several times, I have never advocated that Alexander was homosexual, but bisexual. There is a difference.
I do like and respect history. I do not get my history from Hollywood or people like “Rev.” Fred Phelps.
As to your previous comments about books not being invented at that time, in Thebes, the Healing Place of the Soul, the palace collection of King Ramesses II, existed about 1300 BCE. It contained about 20,000 rolls and was probably a religious or philosophic library. Amen-en-haut was one of the librarians.
Somebody was pulling your leg. She was a novelist, a popular novelist (i.e. a writer of potboilers). She had no training in history (she was a nurse) and she lived with another woman and was probably a lesbian, although such things weren't talked about very openly in her day.
Not very good authority.
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