Hephaistion's Thighs

Author: Lysis

(Copyright June 2012)

Alexander reflects on Hephaistion and certain of his more physical aspects to which he has long been drawn.

*To Phaifan, a particular fan of Hephaistion's thighs.

When he first laid eyes on them, they were slender and covered with bruises. They had both fought a hard bout in the palestra, and at ten years, all one wants to do is beat his opponent's face into the sand, preferably with a good amount of blood in accompaniment. However, they had struck him even then, wishing he had such a long length of leg, such a glorious height to match the stature of his dreams.

Then in his fifteen year, on a hot summer night, after battle, their wounds seen to and no longer aching while singing bawdy songs around the firelight, with the velvet black sky in the background he studied them. Hephaistion's thighs, tan and taut beneath the black leather skirt of his kilt, and mused on thoughts that he decided to act upon while full of wine and Nike. He rose and pulled an equally willing Hephaistion up with him. They stumbled along back to their tent where he became intimately acquainted with the pleasures of those strongly muscled thighs.

Twenty seven years old, many battles behind them both, lovers of both sexes had graced their beds, but still the one he longed for more than any other, even over the lithe, muscled legs of a particular young Persian, was the one who had delighted his eye all along, Hephaistion who stood tall and strong upon the earth beside him.

His thirty-second year, Baktrian and Persian beauty, enough to make any man drunk with pleasure, he'd had his share. He was no untried boy, or cocky youth who would take or give as the whim might strike him. He was a man grown with wives and perhaps children on the way. Still, he hungered, his longings never satisfied unless he lay down besides the one who could give solace to those yearnings. Only Hephaistion could slake that thirst.

He stood alone listening to the bitter sound of silence in answer to his question, the impossible wail of mourning in the distance. He had conquered so much, but never that which he truly desired. He would long forever until reunited in Elysium. Hephaistion was dead, and like Akhillies, he was bereft.

So many things taunted him, fair and ill... images full of laugher as they splashed their boyhood away in sundrenched waters at Mieza, or marched together in hardship to glory on the endless mountains, deserts and plains of Asia. Memories revisited upon him in his grief and most he drowned in the sorrow that left him limp and listless. Ah, but of all those dreams that Eros tends and nurtures that become real among men who dream and desire, those shared pleasures, whether as youth or men grown, he had revered most of all, Hephaistion' thighs.

Antilochus, weep for me the living, rather than for him, the dead; for I have lost my all... No care did you have for the chaste consecration of our thighs; O thou most ungrateful for my many kisses…and the devout union of our thighs! ... and yet, since I love him, they are not repulsive to my sight.

Aeschylus, Fragments 64-66 of The Myrmidons

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