Alexander The Great In Love

Desire, Violence and Gender in the Conquest of Asia

Antela Bernárdez, Borja

This is a book mainly about Love and Desire, kink and Queerness, but also about violence. Structured in four chapters, the first one is devoted to the way Love is presented by the tradition on Alexander the Great and the Argead kings. A second chapter is related to another kind of Aphrodite’s attributions, as it is sex, in its violent form: raping and slavery of women. The third chapter studies two aspects of their royal and charismatic powers: the control over animals, and the cases in our sources where members of the Argead family are involved with practices of transvestism and cross-dressing, two aspects frequently related to Dionysos that are also connected to the cults of Aphrodite in Macedonia. In the last chapter, I drive an analysis of Alexander’s performative displays in an attempt to ungender some of the usual perspectives on the many details we have about him, his sexuality, customs and dressing, adoptions of oriental traditions, and later reception and renovation of his own character.