Quintus Curtius reports that "365 concubines, the same number as Darius had had, filled [Alexander the Great's] palace, attended by herds of eunuchs, also accustomed to being used like women."79
Without calling Alexander a eunuch, his Roman biographer of the fourth-century CE said he "scorned sensual pleasures to such an extent that his mother was anxious lest he might be unable to beget offspring,"80 and there seems to have been some doubt expressed as to his eligibility for the Macedonian throne.81 In other words, Alexander may have been a natural eunuch. He had two passionate love affairs in his short life, both with men. The first was with his childhood friend and later general, Hephaiston, to whom he felt so close that he told the Persian queen: "This man too is Alexander."82 The second was the defeated Persian king's lover Bagoas, "a eunuch of remarkable beauty and in the very flower of boyhood, who had been loved by Darius and was afterward to be loved by Alexander."83 Bagoas, "who won the regard of Alexander by submitting his body"84 for sex, convinced Alexander to execute a certain Persian chieftain who had insulted Bagoas by calling him a harlot. This chieftain had asserted that it was "not the Persian custom to marry males who were feminized by being screwed."85
In spite of the chieftain's protestation, there is some doubt that the custom was entirely alien to Persia.86 It is certainly clear that Darius, Bagoas's lover before Alexander, was a Persian! In fact, Zarathustra himself, the Persian prophet, seems to have been aware of the "rapture which a friend induces in a friend."87 Moreover, using eunuchs for passive sex partners was a widespread custom across the Mediterranean region.
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Quintus Curtius VI 5.23. Latin: "Inter quae Bagoas erat, specie singulari spado atque in ipso flore pueritiae, cui et Dareus assuerat et mox Alexander assuevit ..."
Quintus Curtius X 1.25-26. Latin: "Bagoae spadoni, qui Alexandrum obsequio corporis devixerat sibi, nullum honorem habuit, adminitusque a quibusdam Bagoam Alexandro cordi esse, respondit amicos regis, non scorta se colere, nec moris esse Persis mares ducere qui stupro effeminarentur."