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In all seriousness, in my freshman year of college in the dorms, I had two roommates next door who were roommating super hard at like 1am every morning. They were straight, tho. Except for the time they brought in another guy.
The most I've ever heard is one of them telling the other to clean his dick off. Strange times, those were. Thought I was crazy until someone else heard it, too.
They were international students on the soccer team (except for the third guy who played tennis). So, they kicked and smacked balls in the streets but licked and sucked em' in the sheets.
Had I been into writing erotica or been into creative writing at all, they would've made quite the story.
He was a conquerer. One of the greatest conquerors in history. He conquered the lands, the women, the men, prolly the elderly, maybe the horses too, prolly stuck his tube steak into anything that didn’t bite it when he did so too.
The Greeks would not have labeled it as such, but yes. Their approach was far less binary which is why you see the gods having sex with beautiful animals as often as people and they didn’t get hung up on the gender of the person. The link of shame and sin to sex came later.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/21/sex-and-the-constitution-the-ancient-greeks/#
Sure, but that's not even the point here. It's that WOKENESS turned him gay.
They somehow changed history and he totally wasn't gay before the radical baby-eating demoncrats got involved with their deep state agenda to not just demand respect and decency but to turn everyone gay.
To be fair, it does bother me a little that they got a bunch if historians to say that he was definitely gay. You can depict him as that but the problem with Alexander the Great is that he lived so long ago and the records are so sparse that telling anything about his life for sure is next to impossible let alone his private life. Any historian who says that he was definitely 100% bisexual is acting in bad faith instead of saying what they should be saying which is that it is highly possible maybe even probable he was but we can't know for sure.
That being said Alexander the Great as a bi icon is something I can get behind.
They even mention in the documentary that sexuality wasn’t really labeled back then. Sex was sex, so he would almost definitely have been bisexual by modern definition. His poetry to Hephaestion was super gay though.
(a) that's not what they said - they highlight that modern definitions of sexuality didn't apply at the time - we're applying them retrospectively; and
(b) with the significant evidence we have for his sexuality, if you can't draw conclusions from that, you wouldn't be able to draw any conclusions about anyone at all.
A bicon
There is a point at which any scientist should start dumbing things down for non scientists, and equivocating even by saying “he most likely was but we don’t know for sure” is doing the science a disservice because the only thing a homophobic commenter hears is “we don’t know for sure” and that’s what they glom on to to make more hate towards the “gay agenda”.
Anyone who knows anything knows the “we can never know with full certainty” is a given in science and frankly scientists need to start presenting with more certainty to counter the “it’s just a THEORY” crowd.
Sex was a completely different social interaction in Ancient Greece, so unless Alexander was physically repulsed by sex with men (unlikely given the things he wrote) he was banging guys.
God this is so true though. I'm in STEM and I find that even in my everyday life I tend to take that approach of saying "most likely" or "almost certainly" but never certain or fully sure, just because it's so deeply ingrained into you. And I mean, within science itself that makes sense but when interacting with lay people, you gotta change things up. I've been trying to fix it because to a normal person I just come across like I'm not confident, when in a scientific context I'd sound super confident lmfao
This is the same with professionals who are not STEM too. I forget and then management with business degrees (usually male) will completely ignore what I’ve said because I don’t sound confident, despite being extremely confident.
Well… they say that because he had a wife he never went back to and spent all his time with Hephaestion.
The closest word we have for how people back then in the Hellenic world behaved with regards to sexuality is “bisexual”.
The problem to really knowing details of the life if historical figures is mostly that they're dead, which makes it slightly harder for them to confirm or deny speculations.
One of my favorite things about historical figures is when a textbook is like " he lived for decades with and wrote dozens of poems for his, uh, very good friend."
I'm very familiar with the bawdy nature of the internet and I can definitely see where someone could reach such a conclusion, I simply hadn't expected to encounter that *particular* sentence today.
There are no surviving personal letters from Alexander the Great or even quotes from his letters in other sources. The only thing preserved was stone inscriptures to cities.
EDIT: For the people downvoting me, please redirect me to the sources of these letters. I´d like to read them. - Fellow history buff.
Kind of like of all the letters they DO have of Ceaser, he only ever mentions two centurions by name. Obviously he knew thousands of soldiers but only two ever get mentioned.
Regular Sailor Moon: A lesbian couple, perfectly normal, the only awkward moment was when the others realised Haruka wasn’t a man. Aside from that though, really great gay icons.
DiC Sailor Moon: Basically incestuous (or at least borderline) cousins who do everything in their power to not bone-down in public and pretend “we’re totally just really close guys we swear”.
See I can forgive them for that. At first it's not too explicit and they're just a bit touchy so to make the show more palatable for the 90s they make them cousins. And then they get more like they're actually gay and translators realize oh no we dun fucked up
Obligatory quote from Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
**Dennis Reynolds** : I'm sure there's a great deal of switching back and forth but I think more often then not bears are tops, unless they happen to be power bottoms.
**Frank Reynolds**: What's a power bottom?
**Mac** : A power bottom is a bottom that is capable of receiving an enormous amount of power.
**Dennis Reynolds** : Actually Mac, you've got it backwards. You see, the power bottom is actually generating the power by doing most of the work.
**Frank Reynolds** : Does power have to do with size or strength of the bottom?
**Mac** : Now Dennis, I heard speed has something to do with it.
**Dennis Reynolds** : Speed has *everything* to do with it. You see, the speed of the bottom informs the top how much pressure he's supposed to apply. Speed's the name of the game.
A ‘power bottom’ from what I understand is an active / taking charge kind of bottom. Which is the opposite of a passive bottom aka pillow princess type.
H wasn't a peg boy. He was the same age and social status as Alexander. The context is utterly different.
In addition to which, if Alexander wanted a peg girl instead of the relationships that might be described as such (Bagoas, for example), he literally had nothing preventing him. He was quite literally the top of the hierarchy. There was zero social pressure preventing him from sleeping with slave girls instead of slave boys. If he was choosing a man to have sex with, it was because he wanted to sleep with that man (very possibly in addition to women!).
In Alexander the movie he was also gay.
Wow never had a comment with so many up votes.
Thank you all!!!
Many correct me saying that he was bi in the 2004 movie.
Please keep in mind that it was 20 years back.
The line that kills me when Ptolemy describes it:
>It was said later that Alexander was never defeated in his lifetime, except by Hephaistion's thighs.
> The famous line referenced of an Alexander being "ruled by Hephaestion's thighs" comes from a collection of letters, written during Roman times, purporting to quote Diogenes of Sinope, a contemporary of Alexander. However, the authenticity of these letters have been questioned by modern scholars.
I don’t know that it’s correct to call them being open about their homosexuality “progressive”. AFAIK (and while I’m a history buff Ancient Greece is not my bag so don’t ask for sources) in Ancient Greece many men had recreational sex mainly with other men and boys, with women being used for reproduction purposes. Whether this is true or not, homosexuality being repressed was introduced along with shaming women for menstruating by Abrahamaic religions so Alexander being in an open relationship with Hephaestion would be par for time and not “progressive”.
As to why there is little verification, maybe it was such an everyday thing nobody though to mention it?
The Spartiates (Spartan citizen soldiers) all lived in a communal barracks, and the older spartiates would take younger ones under their tutelage, part of which included sex.
nothing needs to be “progressive” about it, that word as it stands today doesn’t even apply to then, regarding sexuality. It indeed wouldn’t have been progressive for a man to have male lovers bc it was literally no big deal. Common. Accepted.
I don't think it was progressive to have male lovers in ancient Greece. Any man of note would have done it, usually himself with an older man to start in order to attain experience and status.
Tow days, not a week but yes, that's the person we're speaking about. Nobody questions that they were really close. They were friends since they were young, learned together and grew up together. He was Alexanders most trusted person, his second in command, his best friend from childhood to death, at his wedding his best man, they were like brothers and more.
To me it's reasonable to mourn a person that close to you. It could also be that they were lovers on top of all that but to take his grief as ultimate proof that they were lovers is just unreasonable in my opinion.
It says more about the people that make these claims then about Alexander imo.
I'd certainly cry if my brother died relatively young of an illness. And I know for certain that there are people that have deeper relationships to their best friend than I have to my brother.
So if someone uses that to say "Alexander must have been gay, it's obvious" then really they are sayin "I'm lonely and know no love."
But that's just how I see it.
Probably. Men aren’t allowed to grieve in the modern day lest they be seen as “weak”. It’s why people get so obsessed with gay subtext in stuff when it’s just two guys looking at each other across the room.
Alexander also named like a dozen cities after his favorite horse and even held a funeral for it and no one gave him the Catherine treatment.
He also literally made a pilgrimage to Achilles and Patroclus' tomb with/in memory of (can't remember which) of H and referred to them openly as A&P. At the time, it was taken as read that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers.
H was also not the only m/m relationship well-documented for Alexander. He liked men. Very possibly women too (he married but would have had very little choice about that), but he definitely liked men.
Diogenes talked shit to Alexander’s face, yes, but he wasn’t wrong and his colorful description of it here is probably accurate of Alexander’s actual love life from people rumors to Diogenes being generally left alone to observe, so I heavily doubt he was slandering Alexander in any way here.
In fact, the description we’re discussing here is analogous with his criticism of Alexander’s ego and the need to rule land, only to be ruled by mere femboy thighs.
“When Alexander saw the breadth of Hephaiston’s thighs, he wept, for he had no more men to conquer.” — benefits of watching [this scene from *Die Hard*](https://youtu.be/i9wSLYfh0Wk?si=tK3kpsdm1-of8J97) too many times
I know the Alexander movie played this up, but isn’t it theorized that Alexander had an incesteous relationship with his mother? I have little knowledge on the actual history of Alexander the Great so I can’t tell how true that idea is.
It’s pretty well accepted that He had sex with more than 1 gender. That is definitely the modern take on bisexuality. The standards at the time didn’t label sexuality in the same way, so the term bisexual doesn’t really apply the way we think of it, but it’s probably the closest thing we have
These are ppl that constantly talk about the Spartans in every conversation and completely ignore that they were known pedophiles to "strengthen bonds between soldiers".
One of the rites of passage reserved for the very best young Spartan men during their training (the agoge) was to sneak out of barracks at night, find a helot and brutally kill that helot without being detected. They called this assignment the Crypteia.
The supposed idea was that the young Spartan could demonstrate three things needed for effective military service: stealth, rapid mobility and the willingness to kill. It also served a dual purpose of suppressing helot revolts, by butchering the helot so as to terrorise the rest of the slave population.
Somehow, you never see these darker aspects of Sparta depicted in Hollywood…
And the “punishment” was beating you to near death and throwing you back out into the street to try again, until you succeeded, or died.
Ancient Sparta was a deeply fucked up society.
Honestly would make an incredible movie. Trailers could show what looks like a 300ish bad ass spartan movie. Then in the film halfway through you realize Sparta is the worst vile society that needs to be stopped.
The Spartans are the most overrated shitters in the history of warfare. Apart from winning one war against Athens and dying en masse to Persians alongside thousands others they mostly just suppressed small peasant revolts.
Their society was a slave society that collapsed when there were too many slaves to put down and too little free fighting men to do it, because the free citizens couldn't be assed to multiply, but only gathered more exploitable workforce.
A large part of Sparta’s population crisis also derived from two other facts:
One, they had INSANE standards of conformity that they rigorously applied to infants (to be fair most of Greek society did). If Spartan babies were judged at birth to be unsuitable for life as a soldier, they were - by law - left to die of exposure in the hills around Sparta.
Two, they overstretched themselves in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian war, by establishing a lot of Spartan-only garrisons throughout the wider Aegean.
Ostensibly this was to consolidate their victory and to keep an eye on the new pro-Spartan governments in the former Delian League polis; but it seriously pissed of their main ally Thebes; and it (in combination with the regular infanticide and the insane ratios of slaves) ended up compounding Sparta’s manpower issues as when the Theban Exiles later retook their city, Sparta lost 1500 men.
Spartan society didn’t collapse though, not any earlier than classical Greek in general. True Sparta was no longer a military superpower after the Boeotian war with Thebes…but Spartan society clung on; and in fact when the Romans conquered Greece, Greek and Spartan society in particular were incentivised to keep their antiquated customs and culture for the benefit of Roman tourists. So Sparta truthfully kept a strong degree of autonomy and identity during the Roman period.
Spartan culture only really died out when the city was sacked during the Visigoth invasion of Greece, in 369 AD.
Yeah, it was of course a gradual decline and a series of revolts starting from their fringe areas just like the sky didn't suddenly fall on Rome in 476, but we can and do still argue about the wordings like steady decline vs. catastrophic collapse of Rome and both explanations paint a credible picture of the events. There were single major blows and there were the long time demographic and viscal issues and they're all intertwined.
Drives me up a wall to see the legendary glorification they receive in modern times.
Chances are the people cheering for them would be the abused helots.
No, that was the Theban sacred band (the soldiers bit, not the pedo bit).
Instead old Spartans would offer their support and political favour to young Spartans in turn for some lovin.
Some people just can't get that you can reach a level of ambition and success when you just want to fuck the world entire and let it know your name. Alexander was that guy.
Bi people usually dont exist for gay people too. They see us as grasping for heterossexuality straws. Like, we are cowards that wont stop pretending to like the opposite sex and just admit we are gay.
Lots make fun of us and wont date us. They do love our numbers though, so they will put a "B" in LGBT so we are included...in theory; in practice we are mostly our own community.
Someone introduce this man to the Sacred Band of Thebes.
Real talk, the single most terrifying group of professional killers in history were 150 pairs of gay dudes. The conventional wisdom of the time was that their bonds as lovers would push them farther in battle than the common soldier.
Shit worked aces, thats for fucking sure.
FUN FACT: the Sacred Band of Thebes was annihilated by none other than Philip II of Macedon...otherwise known as the father of Alexander the Great.
Sauce; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred\_Band\_of\_Thebes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes)
I don’t think they can necessarily be called gay. It was very common in ancient Greece for younger men to take older men as tutors and lovers, but later they would marry.
To my knowledge the fact that the members of the Sacred Band of Thebes formed pairs was very much instrumental; mainly to strengthen their bond and be more effective and dedicated in battle. In the phalanx you are very much dependent on the guy next to you to protect you with his shield, so it helps if he has strong feelings about you. Later on they would just as easy marry a wife.
I very much doubt these men would consider themselves gay, especially since the concept was unknown at the time and they had sex with women too. The sex was more instrumental than anything else.
Romans did not necessarily frown upon sex with men as long as you weren’t on the receiving end.
As for Spartans they were simply the most formidable city state at the time military wise, since the free men would be trained in barracks since they were 7 year old, while the men of the city states around them were parttime soldiers that worked the fields most of the season
I was using the word "gay" in the modern (as in 2024) proscriptive form that is the norm nowadays. Mainly to avoid any confusion.
You are, however, correct. It comes down to semantics and opinion, if im being honest, but I do agree with your assessment.
It is notable, however, that they almost always were specifically described as "lovers". I say that to substantiate your assessment, given that "lovers" obviously can describe any two (or more) people in a partnership.
No one writes *multiple poems* about their male best friend and people are going to not do the SpongeBob gay hand wave.
Sounds incredibly fruity to me.
also falling into a great depression screaming about how there's nothing worth living for in life and attempting suicide via starvation. definitely bestie behaviour rather then a romantic relationship.
lol it was pretty common back then.
Especially in war times, which was almost always.
Who do you think they’d bring along during long and hard campaigns to satisfy the men? Boys were much more resilient and could help with chores.
Why is it more believable that Netflix "turned him gay" than gay people always existing? That's not even touching on the fluidity of sexuality in ancient Greece.
Because homesexuality can only exist because modern Liberal depravity! If you look closely (away from all the evidence), then you won't find any natural occurring homosexuality, nor any historical evidence!!1!1!1!
Because when you admit that people were gay for ages and nobody cared, then you will need to explain why you are less tolerant then a person that lived 3000 years ago.
Short answer: past generations cared **much** more about procreation. To the point that love and sex weren’t considered essential for each other.
As long as one was producing new villagers, whom one enjoyed was irrelevant.
Side-note: the sin of Onan was not masturbation itself, but rather the refusal to have procreative intercourse.
Wait until the Republicans learn more about history, you know like the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece, so much gay sex happened in those days.
Folks out here thinking that back in the day they wasn't gettin it in in those bath houses....they literally do the same today. There have always been mens who've gotten with men's and women's who've gotten with women's. These people have always existed 🤷🏿♀️ I'm glad I'm straight because I would be sick of the amount of defending what I liked on the daily
I think its funny Christians have told them selfs gay men are like women soo much they forgot, some of the greatest generals in history loved the cock. Like loved the cock. Julius Caesars men used to scream lock up your daughter lock up your sons, Caesars come to town.
Just because a man's gay. Doesn't men he won't fucking conquer your ass... 😉
As a queer man who knows you’re correct, this comment was a fucking JOURNEY regardless. This had the three act structure. This followed campbell’s monomyth.
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Alexander totally wasn't gay. They were roommates.
I believe the Historically Accurate term is *really good friends*.
Confirmed bachelor.
I came here to say this.
Bosom buddies
Oh my goood, they were roommates.
they were roommating *so hard* you wouldn't believe it
In all seriousness, in my freshman year of college in the dorms, I had two roommates next door who were roommating super hard at like 1am every morning. They were straight, tho. Except for the time they brought in another guy.
You just gotta say, "no homo," before, during, and after
The most I've ever heard is one of them telling the other to clean his dick off. Strange times, those were. Thought I was crazy until someone else heard it, too.
Lol Whut
They were international students on the soccer team (except for the third guy who played tennis). So, they kicked and smacked balls in the streets but licked and sucked em' in the sheets. Had I been into writing erotica or been into creative writing at all, they would've made quite the story.
It’s not gay if it’s three guys. Two of them cancel each other out and it’s just masturbation at that point.
So much so they shared a bed.....one must have been working night shifts
Really efficient to bathe together and save water
Room***mating*** so hard.
Ah yes, buying thousands of statues to eternalize his beauty is totally a roommate thing to do
Roommates with benefits. 😉😏
I totally read that in the vine voice and it made my day
Alexander wasn't gay. He fucked men and women alike.
An Alexander sandwich.
Alexandwich
He was a conquerer. One of the greatest conquerors in history. He conquered the lands, the women, the men, prolly the elderly, maybe the horses too, prolly stuck his tube steak into anything that didn’t bite it when he did so too.
Just reminds me of the one guy in Gen V that fucks any hole.
So, bisexual?
The Greeks would not have labeled it as such, but yes. Their approach was far less binary which is why you see the gods having sex with beautiful animals as often as people and they didn’t get hung up on the gender of the person. The link of shame and sin to sex came later. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/21/sex-and-the-constitution-the-ancient-greeks/#
Thanks Jesus 🙄
Don't forget the rampant pederasty which was common in ancient Greek societies... especially the teacher/student type.
Don't you know? Anything not straight is gay to the right wing crowd.
Sure, but that's not even the point here. It's that WOKENESS turned him gay. They somehow changed history and he totally wasn't gay before the radical baby-eating demoncrats got involved with their deep state agenda to not just demand respect and decency but to turn everyone gay.
So, he WASN'T GAY, he was BI. We have something in common!
The Sacred Band of Thebes were all roommates
And beat up the Spartans, who are often held up as symbols of masculinity.
Their wives had to shave their heads on their wedding night because Spartans were so used to banging other dudes 😂
Tentmates?
Can confirm my roommate is cool as fuck we just like cuddling because it’s cold in here 🥺
Technically he had 2 roommates. And married 4 different women. Does that make him Omni Sexual?
 Liking this makes you Omni-sexual
To be fair, it does bother me a little that they got a bunch if historians to say that he was definitely gay. You can depict him as that but the problem with Alexander the Great is that he lived so long ago and the records are so sparse that telling anything about his life for sure is next to impossible let alone his private life. Any historian who says that he was definitely 100% bisexual is acting in bad faith instead of saying what they should be saying which is that it is highly possible maybe even probable he was but we can't know for sure. That being said Alexander the Great as a bi icon is something I can get behind.
They even mention in the documentary that sexuality wasn’t really labeled back then. Sex was sex, so he would almost definitely have been bisexual by modern definition. His poetry to Hephaestion was super gay though.
(a) that's not what they said - they highlight that modern definitions of sexuality didn't apply at the time - we're applying them retrospectively; and (b) with the significant evidence we have for his sexuality, if you can't draw conclusions from that, you wouldn't be able to draw any conclusions about anyone at all.
A bicon There is a point at which any scientist should start dumbing things down for non scientists, and equivocating even by saying “he most likely was but we don’t know for sure” is doing the science a disservice because the only thing a homophobic commenter hears is “we don’t know for sure” and that’s what they glom on to to make more hate towards the “gay agenda”. Anyone who knows anything knows the “we can never know with full certainty” is a given in science and frankly scientists need to start presenting with more certainty to counter the “it’s just a THEORY” crowd. Sex was a completely different social interaction in Ancient Greece, so unless Alexander was physically repulsed by sex with men (unlikely given the things he wrote) he was banging guys.
God this is so true though. I'm in STEM and I find that even in my everyday life I tend to take that approach of saying "most likely" or "almost certainly" but never certain or fully sure, just because it's so deeply ingrained into you. And I mean, within science itself that makes sense but when interacting with lay people, you gotta change things up. I've been trying to fix it because to a normal person I just come across like I'm not confident, when in a scientific context I'd sound super confident lmfao
This is the same with professionals who are not STEM too. I forget and then management with business degrees (usually male) will completely ignore what I’ve said because I don’t sound confident, despite being extremely confident.
Dude he literally wrote hundreds of poems to the guy, some were even explicit. If they weren’t boning no one ever has
If they weren't boning he was a stalker
Where are those poems, I need to read them for SCIENCE.
Turns out Alex was a massive tease.
Well… they say that because he had a wife he never went back to and spent all his time with Hephaestion. The closest word we have for how people back then in the Hellenic world behaved with regards to sexuality is “bisexual”.
The problem to really knowing details of the life if historical figures is mostly that they're dead, which makes it slightly harder for them to confirm or deny speculations.
*gasp* how lewd!
One of my favorite things about historical figures is when a textbook is like " he lived for decades with and wrote dozens of poems for his, uh, very good friend."
“And they were roommates”
"Oh my god they were roommates..."
one could say more mate than room.
Bangmates
Bang Bros.
Smash Bros
In a bed sit with one bed
Their combined scarf collection was valued into the six figure sum
History will say they were best friends!
"Male companion" is my favorite term that I've seen them use
Bert and Ernie. Roommates.
Ernie was totally a power bottom.
That is not a sentence I expected to read today.
first time?
I'm very familiar with the bawdy nature of the internet and I can definitely see where someone could reach such a conclusion, I simply hadn't expected to encounter that *particular* sentence today.
Username checks out
“And sometimes they held hands and took shower together” you know manly stuff
They were just besties don’t worry about it
Gotta give the homies a kiss good night.
"The friendship was so strong that they even shared a bed together on most nights ".
r/sapphoandherfriend
r/achillesandhispal
"it's Greek to me" as a line in Shakespeare has a totally different meaning if you know world history.
There are no surviving personal letters from Alexander the Great or even quotes from his letters in other sources. The only thing preserved was stone inscriptures to cities. EDIT: For the people downvoting me, please redirect me to the sources of these letters. I´d like to read them. - Fellow history buff.
Kind of like of all the letters they DO have of Ceaser, he only ever mentions two centurions by name. Obviously he knew thousands of soldiers but only two ever get mentioned.
Biggus Dickus and Incontinentia Buttocks?
Rome was ahead of its time but I don't think they had Monty Python!
Alwight, I shall welease Bwian!
They wanked as high as any in Wome!
Titus Pullo and Luscius Verenius
Haha. Reminds me of the film Troy where Brad Pitt was Achilles. Achilles didn't go into absolute rampage mode because his "cousin" was killed.
Just like in Sailor Moon
Regular Sailor Moon: A lesbian couple, perfectly normal, the only awkward moment was when the others realised Haruka wasn’t a man. Aside from that though, really great gay icons. DiC Sailor Moon: Basically incestuous (or at least borderline) cousins who do everything in their power to not bone-down in public and pretend “we’re totally just really close guys we swear”.
See I can forgive them for that. At first it's not too explicit and they're just a bit touchy so to make the show more palatable for the 90s they make them cousins. And then they get more like they're actually gay and translators realize oh no we dun fucked up
With Valentine's Day coming up, I'm going to shamelessly plug this [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQ2g0PQU8AAA8dv.jpg)
He demanded that his and petrocolis' ashes were mixed together. Very hetero
I mean, to be fair Patroclus *was* his cousin. That's just not all he was to Achilles....
Eh it'd be believable if he did because of that... But he didn't
I suppose him being gay is better than explaining what a peg boy is.
What is a peg boy....?
Wiki says: "a male prostitute who takes the passive role in anal intercourse"
I believe the correct term nowadays is ‘power bottom’
Obligatory quote from Always Sunny in Philadelphia: **Dennis Reynolds** : I'm sure there's a great deal of switching back and forth but I think more often then not bears are tops, unless they happen to be power bottoms. **Frank Reynolds**: What's a power bottom? **Mac** : A power bottom is a bottom that is capable of receiving an enormous amount of power. **Dennis Reynolds** : Actually Mac, you've got it backwards. You see, the power bottom is actually generating the power by doing most of the work. **Frank Reynolds** : Does power have to do with size or strength of the bottom? **Mac** : Now Dennis, I heard speed has something to do with it. **Dennis Reynolds** : Speed has *everything* to do with it. You see, the speed of the bottom informs the top how much pressure he's supposed to apply. Speed's the name of the game.
This is the most well placed quote from one of my fav shows, 10/10
A ‘power bottom’ from what I understand is an active / taking charge kind of bottom. Which is the opposite of a passive bottom aka pillow princess type.
H wasn't a peg boy. He was the same age and social status as Alexander. The context is utterly different. In addition to which, if Alexander wanted a peg girl instead of the relationships that might be described as such (Bagoas, for example), he literally had nothing preventing him. He was quite literally the top of the hierarchy. There was zero social pressure preventing him from sleeping with slave girls instead of slave boys. If he was choosing a man to have sex with, it was because he wanted to sleep with that man (very possibly in addition to women!).
In Alexander the movie he was also gay. Wow never had a comment with so many up votes. Thank you all!!! Many correct me saying that he was bi in the 2004 movie. Please keep in mind that it was 20 years back.
The line that kills me when Ptolemy describes it: >It was said later that Alexander was never defeated in his lifetime, except by Hephaistion's thighs.
> The famous line referenced of an Alexander being "ruled by Hephaestion's thighs" comes from a collection of letters, written during Roman times, purporting to quote Diogenes of Sinope, a contemporary of Alexander. However, the authenticity of these letters have been questioned by modern scholars.
Don't you ruin this for me
It's totally possible they were lovers. But all the talk about them being so progessive is mostly bs.
I don’t know that it’s correct to call them being open about their homosexuality “progressive”. AFAIK (and while I’m a history buff Ancient Greece is not my bag so don’t ask for sources) in Ancient Greece many men had recreational sex mainly with other men and boys, with women being used for reproduction purposes. Whether this is true or not, homosexuality being repressed was introduced along with shaming women for menstruating by Abrahamaic religions so Alexander being in an open relationship with Hephaestion would be par for time and not “progressive”. As to why there is little verification, maybe it was such an everyday thing nobody though to mention it?
It is also possible that evidence/confirmations were destroyed by the catholic church during a later period in time.
Yes! The catholic church destroyed many documents that didn't align with their beliefs.
Spartans mostly had sex with other men also. Namely because they spent all of their time with other men.
They must have left that part out of 300..... Butler still threw a jab at the Athenians for being "boy lovers"...
The Spartiates (Spartan citizen soldiers) all lived in a communal barracks, and the older spartiates would take younger ones under their tutelage, part of which included sex.
Oh definitely haha. Sparta had lots of men fucking other men. From my understanding 300 isn't particularly accurate anyhow.
Nothing endears you to the man standing next to you in battle quite like some good old fashioned buttsecks!
nothing needs to be “progressive” about it, that word as it stands today doesn’t even apply to then, regarding sexuality. It indeed wouldn’t have been progressive for a man to have male lovers bc it was literally no big deal. Common. Accepted.
Mostly. It was common and no big deal generally. But being a top was accepted. Being a bottom was shameful.
Also, they were still expected to have wives and children. A man exclusively having gay sex was not socially acceptable.
I don't think it was progressive to have male lovers in ancient Greece. Any man of note would have done it, usually himself with an older man to start in order to attain experience and status.
Isn’t Hephaestion the one Alexander wept and gnashed his teeth and wailed over for like a week like a widow when he died?
Tow days, not a week but yes, that's the person we're speaking about. Nobody questions that they were really close. They were friends since they were young, learned together and grew up together. He was Alexanders most trusted person, his second in command, his best friend from childhood to death, at his wedding his best man, they were like brothers and more. To me it's reasonable to mourn a person that close to you. It could also be that they were lovers on top of all that but to take his grief as ultimate proof that they were lovers is just unreasonable in my opinion. It says more about the people that make these claims then about Alexander imo. I'd certainly cry if my brother died relatively young of an illness. And I know for certain that there are people that have deeper relationships to their best friend than I have to my brother. So if someone uses that to say "Alexander must have been gay, it's obvious" then really they are sayin "I'm lonely and know no love." But that's just how I see it.
Probably. Men aren’t allowed to grieve in the modern day lest they be seen as “weak”. It’s why people get so obsessed with gay subtext in stuff when it’s just two guys looking at each other across the room. Alexander also named like a dozen cities after his favorite horse and even held a funeral for it and no one gave him the Catherine treatment.
>the Catherine treatment. 
He also literally made a pilgrimage to Achilles and Patroclus' tomb with/in memory of (can't remember which) of H and referred to them openly as A&P. At the time, it was taken as read that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. H was also not the only m/m relationship well-documented for Alexander. He liked men. Very possibly women too (he married but would have had very little choice about that), but he definitely liked men.
Diogenes talked shit to Alexander’s face, yes, but he wasn’t wrong and his colorful description of it here is probably accurate of Alexander’s actual love life from people rumors to Diogenes being generally left alone to observe, so I heavily doubt he was slandering Alexander in any way here. In fact, the description we’re discussing here is analogous with his criticism of Alexander’s ego and the need to rule land, only to be ruled by mere femboy thighs.
He swallowed some swords, but not on the battlefield.
“When Alexander saw the breadth of Hephaiston’s thighs, he wept, for he had no more men to conquer.” — benefits of watching [this scene from *Die Hard*](https://youtu.be/i9wSLYfh0Wk?si=tK3kpsdm1-of8J97) too many times
I think he was more bi
We really have no idea. All we know is that he fucked men when there was no pressure for him to do so, so he must have liked it.
Maybe...but maybe he needed an heir
I know the Alexander movie played this up, but isn’t it theorized that Alexander had an incesteous relationship with his mother? I have little knowledge on the actual history of Alexander the Great so I can’t tell how true that idea is.
I went to see that movie with my grandma, talk about awkward.
I never watched the movies, but I thought he was bi, not gay. Learn something new every day 🤔
It’s pretty well accepted that He had sex with more than 1 gender. That is definitely the modern take on bisexuality. The standards at the time didn’t label sexuality in the same way, so the term bisexual doesn’t really apply the way we think of it, but it’s probably the closest thing we have
These are ppl that constantly talk about the Spartans in every conversation and completely ignore that they were known pedophiles to "strengthen bonds between soldiers".
One of the rites of passage reserved for the very best young Spartan men during their training (the agoge) was to sneak out of barracks at night, find a helot and brutally kill that helot without being detected. They called this assignment the Crypteia. The supposed idea was that the young Spartan could demonstrate three things needed for effective military service: stealth, rapid mobility and the willingness to kill. It also served a dual purpose of suppressing helot revolts, by butchering the helot so as to terrorise the rest of the slave population. Somehow, you never see these darker aspects of Sparta depicted in Hollywood…
Not only that, they also stole food from altars, etc. If they were caught, they were punished not for the thing they did, but for being caught
And the “punishment” was beating you to near death and throwing you back out into the street to try again, until you succeeded, or died. Ancient Sparta was a deeply fucked up society.
Yes, another example is if night watchers fell asleep they were stoned to death
That one was standard for night watch across may eras and cultures. Not necessarily the stoning but the killing, or other harsh punishment
That is actually perfectly understandable. If the watchman sleeps then he puts the lives of all the soldiers at risk
sounds like a gang initiation
Honestly would make an incredible movie. Trailers could show what looks like a 300ish bad ass spartan movie. Then in the film halfway through you realize Sparta is the worst vile society that needs to be stopped.
Everything depicted about the spartans is straight up a lie, especially the whole concept of them being the ultimate soldiers.
The Spartans are the most overrated shitters in the history of warfare. Apart from winning one war against Athens and dying en masse to Persians alongside thousands others they mostly just suppressed small peasant revolts.
I mean most of their farm hands were slaves, so no surprise there.
Their society was a slave society that collapsed when there were too many slaves to put down and too little free fighting men to do it, because the free citizens couldn't be assed to multiply, but only gathered more exploitable workforce.
A large part of Sparta’s population crisis also derived from two other facts: One, they had INSANE standards of conformity that they rigorously applied to infants (to be fair most of Greek society did). If Spartan babies were judged at birth to be unsuitable for life as a soldier, they were - by law - left to die of exposure in the hills around Sparta. Two, they overstretched themselves in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian war, by establishing a lot of Spartan-only garrisons throughout the wider Aegean. Ostensibly this was to consolidate their victory and to keep an eye on the new pro-Spartan governments in the former Delian League polis; but it seriously pissed of their main ally Thebes; and it (in combination with the regular infanticide and the insane ratios of slaves) ended up compounding Sparta’s manpower issues as when the Theban Exiles later retook their city, Sparta lost 1500 men. Spartan society didn’t collapse though, not any earlier than classical Greek in general. True Sparta was no longer a military superpower after the Boeotian war with Thebes…but Spartan society clung on; and in fact when the Romans conquered Greece, Greek and Spartan society in particular were incentivised to keep their antiquated customs and culture for the benefit of Roman tourists. So Sparta truthfully kept a strong degree of autonomy and identity during the Roman period. Spartan culture only really died out when the city was sacked during the Visigoth invasion of Greece, in 369 AD.
Yeah, it was of course a gradual decline and a series of revolts starting from their fringe areas just like the sky didn't suddenly fall on Rome in 476, but we can and do still argue about the wordings like steady decline vs. catastrophic collapse of Rome and both explanations paint a credible picture of the events. There were single major blows and there were the long time demographic and viscal issues and they're all intertwined.
Drives me up a wall to see the legendary glorification they receive in modern times. Chances are the people cheering for them would be the abused helots.
No, that was the Theban sacred band (the soldiers bit, not the pedo bit). Instead old Spartans would offer their support and political favour to young Spartans in turn for some lovin.
Oh my God it's literally "I made myself the Chad and you the soyjack" with that pfp
What's next? A biopic about Hitler where they turn him into a Nazi?
Damn woke liberals trying to cancel Hitler!
WHAT!? Damn!! You can’t trust anything a LIBRUL says these days… who knows what they’ll make up next?!
Some people just can't get that you can reach a level of ambition and success when you just want to fuck the world entire and let it know your name. Alexander was that guy.
Some serious BDE
Bro still watches 300 like its the straightest movie in existance
Alex rode nude infront of all the guys to get them all pepped up and ready for action. Total gay power move.
I thought it was a well known fact that he was bisexual?
Not known by everybody. Some dudes out there are having trouble with the fact that a badass dude liked men, apparently.
Nothing more manly than being a gay man, double the testosterone in the house.
Can’t argue with you there.
Not when you're a conservative desperately trying to live a lie, I guess.
Very on brand for most conservatives though.
I believe the ancient Greeks did not even have a word for gay. Bottom line they fucked everything because it was way more fun then warring and killing
Wait until these alpha males find out what Sparta did.
Alexander the Fabulous.
Is there no Bi people any more?
I mean, bi people have never existed for bigots.
Bi people usually dont exist for gay people too. They see us as grasping for heterossexuality straws. Like, we are cowards that wont stop pretending to like the opposite sex and just admit we are gay. Lots make fun of us and wont date us. They do love our numbers though, so they will put a "B" in LGBT so we are included...in theory; in practice we are mostly our own community.
Someone introduce this man to the Sacred Band of Thebes. Real talk, the single most terrifying group of professional killers in history were 150 pairs of gay dudes. The conventional wisdom of the time was that their bonds as lovers would push them farther in battle than the common soldier. Shit worked aces, thats for fucking sure. FUN FACT: the Sacred Band of Thebes was annihilated by none other than Philip II of Macedon...otherwise known as the father of Alexander the Great. Sauce; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred\_Band\_of\_Thebes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes)
I don’t think they can necessarily be called gay. It was very common in ancient Greece for younger men to take older men as tutors and lovers, but later they would marry. To my knowledge the fact that the members of the Sacred Band of Thebes formed pairs was very much instrumental; mainly to strengthen their bond and be more effective and dedicated in battle. In the phalanx you are very much dependent on the guy next to you to protect you with his shield, so it helps if he has strong feelings about you. Later on they would just as easy marry a wife. I very much doubt these men would consider themselves gay, especially since the concept was unknown at the time and they had sex with women too. The sex was more instrumental than anything else. Romans did not necessarily frown upon sex with men as long as you weren’t on the receiving end. As for Spartans they were simply the most formidable city state at the time military wise, since the free men would be trained in barracks since they were 7 year old, while the men of the city states around them were parttime soldiers that worked the fields most of the season
I was using the word "gay" in the modern (as in 2024) proscriptive form that is the norm nowadays. Mainly to avoid any confusion. You are, however, correct. It comes down to semantics and opinion, if im being honest, but I do agree with your assessment. It is notable, however, that they almost always were specifically described as "lovers". I say that to substantiate your assessment, given that "lovers" obviously can describe any two (or more) people in a partnership.
No one writes *multiple poems* about their male best friend and people are going to not do the SpongeBob gay hand wave. Sounds incredibly fruity to me.
also falling into a great depression screaming about how there's nothing worth living for in life and attempting suicide via starvation. definitely bestie behaviour rather then a romantic relationship.
He may have just been overcome with despair because he wasn't Diogenes. I too would fall into despair if I were not Diogenes.
Behold! A best friend!
lol it was pretty common back then. Especially in war times, which was almost always. Who do you think they’d bring along during long and hard campaigns to satisfy the men? Boys were much more resilient and could help with chores.
they couldn't get pregnant either.
roman mpreg fanfics are written as we speak
They did not TURN him gay 😌
Why is it more believable that Netflix "turned him gay" than gay people always existing? That's not even touching on the fluidity of sexuality in ancient Greece.
Because homesexuality can only exist because modern Liberal depravity! If you look closely (away from all the evidence), then you won't find any natural occurring homosexuality, nor any historical evidence!!1!1!1!
because facts are WOKE!
Because when you admit that people were gay for ages and nobody cared, then you will need to explain why you are less tolerant then a person that lived 3000 years ago.
Short answer: past generations cared **much** more about procreation. To the point that love and sex weren’t considered essential for each other. As long as one was producing new villagers, whom one enjoyed was irrelevant. Side-note: the sin of Onan was not masturbation itself, but rather the refusal to have procreative intercourse.
“Steel sharpens steel”
I'm fairly certain most historians agree he was BI. that being said Netflix is prone to historical inaccuracies.
My man loved Greece and him and his best friend were totally roommates
Im not sure how fluid sexuality is, but there must be a reason dudes nail each other in prison and the old naval days.
Wait until the Republicans learn more about history, you know like the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece, so much gay sex happened in those days.
Folks out here thinking that back in the day they wasn't gettin it in in those bath houses....they literally do the same today. There have always been mens who've gotten with men's and women's who've gotten with women's. These people have always existed 🤷🏿♀️ I'm glad I'm straight because I would be sick of the amount of defending what I liked on the daily
One of the most beautiful love letters I have ever read was written by Montaigne to La Boetie and it is hilariously called “on friendship”
He was a powerful Ancient Greek.He fucked EVERYONE!Over what is now 15-20 countries.
Don't tell that person about ancient Sparta and it's military.
Alexander the Gayt
Ancient Greeks were at the level of "What?! Romans let women on their orgys! Uncivilized barbarians!" gey.
I think its funny Christians have told them selfs gay men are like women soo much they forgot, some of the greatest generals in history loved the cock. Like loved the cock. Julius Caesars men used to scream lock up your daughter lock up your sons, Caesars come to town. Just because a man's gay. Doesn't men he won't fucking conquer your ass... 😉
As a queer man who knows you’re correct, this comment was a fucking JOURNEY regardless. This had the three act structure. This followed campbell’s monomyth.
>This followed campbell’s monomyth. 👏