ABSTRACT
Ancient and modern writers have studied various aspects of Alexander's personality. His sexual life, for instance, has been the subject of wild speculation. Some have supposed that his closeness to his mother and his continence in the presence of Darius' mother, wife, and daughters were signs of sexual impotence; others just the opposite, that he travelled with a harem which provided him with a different girl each night of the year; and others that he had homosexual affairs with herds of eunuchs, Hephaestion, Hector, and a Persian boy. The truth is not attainable nor of much importance; for in the Macedonian court homosexual and heterosexual attachments were equally reputable, and the sexual life of Philip, for instance, seems to have had no effect on his achievements in war and politics. Disappointingly for sensationalist writers Alexander's relations with women seem to have been normal enough for a Macedonian king: three or four wives at the age of thirty-two and two or perhaps three sons – Heracles by Barsine, widow of the Rhodian Memnon and daughter of the Persian Artabazus (P. 21.7–9 and Plut. Eum. 1 fin.; C. 10.6.11–13; J. 13.2.7; Suidas s.v. Antipatros); by the Bactrian Roxane a boy who died in infancy (Epit. Metz 70) and a boy born after Alexander's death, who became Alexander IV.1
