[The following is in regards to Alexander the Great’s mourning over the loss of his best and most loyal friend, Hephaestion.]
If Alexander meant more than anything to Hephaestion, so did Hephaestion to Alexander. The violence and extravagance of the king’s grief went beyond all normal bounds. For a day and a night he lay on the body, weeping: no one could comfort him. General mourning was ordered throughout the East. All flutes and other musical instruments were banned in camp. Alexander cut his hair in token of mourning, as Achilles did for Patroclus, and even had the manes and tails of his horses docked. Hephaestion’s wretched physician was crucified [for failing to save him], and the temple of Asclepius in Ecbatana razed to the ground – a brisk gesture of retribution by one god against another [Alexander had recently had himself deified as a living god in Greece]. In heaven as on earth, Alexander gave incompetence very short shrift indeed.
The body was embalmed, and sent on ahead to Babylon, with a royal escort commanded by Perdiccas. A funeral of the magnificence which Alexander had in mind would take some time to prepare. It was finally celebrated in the early spring of 323, and every province of the empire contributed to its cost. The pyre was five stories high and a furlong square at the base, a vast Wagnerian monstrosity decorated with gilded eagles and ships’ prows, lions, bulls and centaurs. ‘On top of all stood sirens, hollowed out and able to conceal within them persons who sang a lament in mourning for the dead’ (Diod. 17.115.4.).
Source:
Green, Peter. “How Many Miles to Babylon?” Alexander of Macedon: 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography. Univ. of California Press, 2005. 465-66. Print.
Further Reading:
Alexander III of Macedon / Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας (Alexander the Great)
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