Sexuality.

This is coolbert:

I see that the movie "Alexander the Great" has been released to the general viewing public. An Oliver Stone production. The movie is getting three and one half stars, but the critics seems to say it is over-long, and over-done.

Certain aspects of the life of Alexander are dutifully shown in the movie.

Alexander, often rated as the greatest General of all time, and a man who had great physical courage, is shown in the movie as engaging in a long term homosexual relationship with one of his closest companions, Hephaistion.

This does seem to be fact? Alexander was a man that today we would refer to as being bisexual [this term did not exist in the era of Alexander]. He did marry [to Roxanne, although did not begat himself]. But for the most part, his sexuality was expressed in man-man love.

This was not unusual for the period.

Phillip, the father of Alexander, was reputed to have had a number of male lovers.

This seems to have been a common feature of Hellenic society at the time. Perhaps this was an expression of the love the Greeks had for the human body, male and female.

As has been mentioned in a previous blog entry, one of the Greek city-states sent a battalion of homosexuals to fight at the battle of Charonea [the battle that established the dominance of Macedon, led by Phillip, over the other Greek city-states]. This battalion was wiped out to the last man. Phillip upon viewing the bodies of the dead homosexuals, was said to have wept profusely.

Unusual sexual proclivities [at least from the standpoint of modern western society] are not confined to the fighting men of the Hellenic-Alexander period either.

Among the eunuchs of China, were famous generals and a most famous admiral. These men, eunuchs in the service of the Emperor, had the ability to overthrow dynasties and were known for successfully commanding armies that had a marked impact upon Chinese history.

Two Chinese eunuch generals were instrumental in establishing a new order that was favorable in their eyes.

"Two eunuch generals raised Yi Zong's fifth son to the throne as Xi Zong (r. 873-88)."

Even the great Genghis Khan met defeat [one of the only two defeats on the battlefield Genghis suffered] at the hands of a eunuch general. "The second, and last defeat of Genghis Khan took place near Peking in 1213 . . . The eunuch general Hu Sha-hu had rebelled against Emperor Wei-wang, killed him, seized power, and installed another Chin prince on the throne . . . Approaching Peking, while crossing a river, his [Genghis's] army was ambushed and defeated by a larger Chinese army under General Hu Sha-hu." This according to Dupuy.

The Chinese Admiral Zheng He led trading fleets of massive size from China to the Indian Ocean and also defeated in naval battle a pirate that preyed upon Chinese merchant vessels.



"In Indonesia, the fleet defeated a powerful Chinese pirate who was later brought back to China for execution."

"His missions showed impressive demonstrations of organizational capability and technological might, but did not lead to significant trade, since Zheng He was an admiral and an official, not a merchant."

Read about the Admiral by clicking here.

Among the troops of the Ottoman Empire, the Janissaries were renowned for their fighting ability and peculiar life style.



These elite troops, formed as they were from Christian youth that had been nominally enslaved [is such a thing possible, to be nominally enslaved??] by the Ottoman Sultan and converted to Islam, were held to a very strict regimen of behavior.

NO beards were allowed [only freemen in the Empire could wear beards] [Alexander, incidentally, was the first man to popularize shaving his beard].

And CELIBACY!! For life. [as long as they were in the Janissary corps??]. This very strict and some would say absurd regimen did create a military unit of great skill, cohesion, and esprit de corps. A military unit that was for centuries unbeatable by the powers of Europe. Celibacy did not diminish the ability of the Janissary Corps to defeat their opponents. Indeed, it may have contributed to their superior fighting spirit.

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the modern U.S. military would not have made sense to Phillip of Macedon, the various Chinese Emperors, or the Ottoman Sultans.

coolbert.