Mary Renault is justly lauded as a groundbreaking LGBT authoress, but this detracts from her brilliance as a historian of ancient Greece and Persia. She methodically weaves history, geography, and Greek literature with fiction to depict the life of Alexander the Great: his childhood, love for Hephaistion, Philip’s court, tempestuous relationship with mum, Olympias, rise to power, and conquest of Asia. Renault’s books, which I started reading as a twelve-year-old, shaped my life, and developed in me, inter alia, a passion for Iran. The essay is part literary criticism, part history, part travelogue. Renault inspired my travels in Iran.
Mary Renault
Eileen Mary Challans (1905–83) wrote under the name “Mary Renault.” She was educated at Oxford (1924–28), worked as a nurse during WWII, and moved to South Africa in 1948 with her “longtime companion,” Julie Mullard. South Africa, despite its apartheid policies, was quite gay-friendly, and home to gay expatriates from repressive regimes in UK and USA. Fuller biographies are available at Britannica and her publisher.
Historical Fiction
Renault’s 1953 gay classic, The Charioteer, set after Dunkirk, is “a tender, intelligent coming-of-age novel and a bold, unapologetic portrayal of homosexuality that stands with Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room as a landmark work in gay literature” (ibid). But The Charioteer is literary fiction—focus is on prose, style, character, theme. It captures the zeitgeist of gay Britain during the war (Nöel Coward had harsher views of her book). However, what sets Renault apart from other writers of gay literature is her “Alexander Trilogy.” The trilogy—three works of historical fiction—set the standard for writing historical fiction.
The historicity of her works, has, of course, been criticized by some historians; and praised by others, including Robin Lane Fox. As a historian of Persia/Iran, I cannot find major points on Persian history that are unacceptable to me; but I agree with her critics that she romanticizes Alexander. As I wrote in A History of Herat about Alexander’s cruelties: “Mongols are vilified in literature, but romanticized Alexander of Macedon, on his eastern campaigns, raped, massacred, deported, and enslaved people; looted and wrecked cultural heritages. Historian Arrian (d. ca. AD 160) emphasized Alexander’s ‘body count’” (History of Herat, p. 18, n. 24). On the plus side, I find many of Renault’s depictions of pre-Islamic Persian culture realistic (see below).
The Trilogy
The three books are Fire From Heaven (1969), The Persian Boy (1972), and Funeral Games (1981).
Fire From Heaven
We meet little Alexander, his wild mother, Olympias, and father Philip, the King of Macedon; his first meeting with Hephaistion, who became the love of Alexander’s life (eight months after Hephaistion died, Alexander, inconsolable with grief, dies on 13 June 323 BC, aged 33); the boys’ education under Aristotle; and Alexander’s rise to power following the murder of Philip. The publisher summarizes the book:
At twenty, when his reign began, Alexander the Great was already a seasoned soldier and a complex, passionate man. Fire From Heaven tells the story of the boy Alexander, and the years that shaped him. Resolute, fearless, and inheriting a striking beauty, Alexander still needed much to make him The Great. He must survive-though with lifelong scars-the dark furies of his Dionysiac mother, who kept him uncertain even of his own paternity; respect his father’s talent for war and kingcraft, though sickened by his sexual grossness; and come to terms with his heritage from both.
The description does not do justice to Fire From Heaven, which Tom Holland described as “the greatest coming-of age-story ever to double as a work of historical fiction” (introduction, p. vii, Virago, 2014). Historical events, like the child Alexander’s interrogation of the Persian emissaries to Philip’s court (see Plutarch’s Lives, trans. A.H. Clough, New York, 1911, v. 4, p. 183), taming of the horse Boukephalos (ibid., 184-86), murder of Philip, etc., are narrated eloquently. Hephaistion is always at Alexander’s side; loyal, dutiful, and loving. As Mary Renault put it: “Hephaistion was waiting. He happened to be there, as he happened to have a ball handy if Alexander wanted a game, or water if he was thirsty; not be calculation, but in a constant awareness by which no smallest trifle was missed” (Fire, 170).
The Persian Boy
I love the The Persian Boy. It is my favorite book (read many times). The publisher:
The Persian Boy tells the story of the climactic last seven years of Alexander the Great’s life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon[ian] army conquered his homeland. Taken as an attendant into Alexander’s household, the beautiful young eunuch becomes the great general’s lover and their relationship sustains Alexander as he survives assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper.
We see ancient Persia through Bagoas’s eyes. It’s an amazing journey. This is why the publisher’s description is deficient. Renault’s portrayals of Persian history and culture under the Achaemenids is superlative. One gets a sense of life in ancient Persia, just as one gets “a sense of what ancient Greece was really like” from Renault’s writings.
The Persian Boy is an evocative journey through ancient Persia. I loved the book as a child, and I still love it as an adult. I traveled in Alexander’s footsteps, from Susa to Ecbatana (Hamadan), and visited archaeological sites like Pasargadae and Persepolis; as well as Herat (allegedly founded by Alexander), Balkh (Bactria), and the Oxus River in Afghanistan. The first time I visited Persepolis (founded in 518 BC by the Achaemenid shah, Darius I), I recalled Bagoas’s anguish when he is informed by an interlocutor that the palace had been burned: “he burned it. Burned it to the ground. Everything gone, ashes, cinders, dust.” Bagoas exclaimed, “What a barbarian! And a fool, to burn it when it belonged to him.” I, too, felt the anger that most Iranians feel when they visit this resplendent site and palace—where only its ornate pillars, bas-reliefs, and sweeping stairway—survived the fiery rampage by drunken Macedonian hillbillies.
Persianization of Alexander
Alexander adopted select Persian court and cultural practices. That Alexander was Persianized to some extent is not disputed. According to Renault, this was through Bagoas’s influence. However, Bagoas’s influence in Persianizing Alexander is disputed by historians. Personally, I doubt this had much to do with Bagoas, who was probably just a “boy toy”; whereas Hephaistion was Alexander’s true love; and confidant in matters of politics, statecraft, and war.
Why did Alexander adopt Persian practices? A key reason is political: to bridge the gap between ruler and subject. Alexander was probably influenced by Persians other than Bagoas to adopt Persian court practices to bond himself with Persian satraps, troops, and officials. His adoption of court practices and cultural norms, however, did upset Macedonians (see, e.g., Arrian, Anabasis, book 4, §§ 7–14).
A Historical Episode from The Persian Boy
An episode I like from The Persian Boy is when Alexander and Hephaistion visited the royal tent where Sisygambis, mother of Achaemenid king, Darius III, was staying with her retinue. The historians give details on this episode not found in Renault. Both men looked fairly alike, although Hephaistion was taller by half a head, and dressed similarly. Sisygambis mistook Hephaistion for Alexander because of his height and prostrated before him. A member of her retinue informed Sisygambis of her faux pas. But Alexander was not offended. He told her, “never mind mother, you weren’t far out; he too is Alexander.” This is accurate. The historians: “You were not mistaken, mother; for this man too is Alexander” (Arrian, bk. 2, § 12; Quintus Curtius, bk. 3, § 12). It is an invocation of gay love, rarely found in histories. One translator of an ancient history claims the statement reflects Alexander’s view of Hephaistion as his “alter ego”! But see Arrian, Anabasis, bk. 7, §§ 14–15: Alexander’s extreme grief when Hephaistion died. Renault stated in Fire From Heaven that Alexander and Hephaistion were like Achilles and Patroclus. The histories, too, allude to the Achilles–Patroclus bond: “Alexander had already suffered the great affliction of Hephaestion’s death, and I believe he would have preferred to go first himself rather than live on in the shadow of that experience, just as I think Achilles too would have chosen to die before Patroclus rather than become the avenger of his death” (Arrian, bk 7, § 16). Renault is surely right that Alexander and Hephaistion were one soul in two bodies.
Funeral Games
I will not say anything about Funeral Games, not because I didn’t like it, but because Alexander and Hephaistion are deceased; and after traveling with them through two books, the sadness is too profound for me to enjoy Funeral Games. Sisygambis, by the way, loved Alexander; he referred to her as “mother.” When Sisygambis learned of his death, she retreated to her quarters, refused food and water, and died four or five days later. I felt the same when I reached the end of The Persian Boy!
Closing
Renault was well-acquainted with Greek literature, geography—Strabo and Herodotus—and histories of Alexander by Romans and Greeks—Plutarch (d. ca. AD 119), Quintus Curtius Rufus (1st century, AD), Arrian of Nicomedia (d. ca. 160 AD; author of Anabasis of Alexander), et al.—and weaves history and geography with fiction as methodically and as cleverly as an Iranian carpet weaver. Historical dates, events, and characters make the fictional elements seem real. Since histories (ancient or otherwise) rarely include such details on love affairs, emotions, and dialogue between friends, she takes literary license in this regard, but the weaving of fact and fiction is gratifying and poignant. Even today, her romanticized Alexander is able to override the part of this historian’s brain that informs him that Alexander was a ruthless barbarian invader who enslaved Asian peoples, and plundered, murdered, and depopulated swathes of Asia. To think of Renault as just an icon of gay literature is an injustice to her literary and historical writing skills.
Perspectives 
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