Alexander Revisited: Olympias’ Bed Chamber to the Caves at Pella

In my previous post on Alexander Revisited I commented on the fact that in his deathbed scene Alexander seemed to be offering his ring to the Persian god, Ahura Mazda. A commenter on my Facebook Alexander page (here) has suggested that he is actually offering it to the eagle that appears throughout the film.
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This eagle is either Zeus himself or, perhaps, the Aetos Dios (Eagle of Zeus) which functions in Greek mythology as both a symbol of the king of the gods and as his servant. Whichever interpretation we go with, the eagle’s presence in the film is meant as a sign of Zeus’ approval of and support for Alexander’s mission. It’s no wonder, then, that as they approach the seemingly impassable Hindu Kush, Alexander asks Ptolemy in concern, ‘where has our eagle gone?’. Has Zeus deserted him?
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I like the idea of Alexander offering the ring to the eagle. The only problem with the idea, though, is that the bird does not appear in the deathbed scene. Does it appear at the end of the film? I’m not going to fast forward to find out. Feel free to tell me; otherwise, I’ll find out at the end of the picture. Certainly, it would make perfect sense for Alexander to offer back to his divine father the power that he felt his father had given him. Now that I think about it, that sounds rather Christian, doesn’t it? I’ll come back to this thought, later.
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Scenes Covered

1. Olympias’ Bed Chamber
2. In the Palestra
3. Mieza
4. The Taming of Bucephalas
5. In the Caves at Pella

Olympias’ Bed Chamber
Following the brief scene in the infirmary we are transported back to Pella ’20 Years Earlier’ - 351 BC. To the surprise of no one who knows anything about the historical Olympias, it begins with her playing with her pet snakes. The scene takes a surprising turn, however, when Olympias plays a brief but very tender game of hide-and-seek with her son (38:25 ff) as she walks round the bed curtain. If you had asked me why Olympias wants the best for Alexander before I had watched this scene I would have said simply because she is ambitious and she hates Philip. Her love for Alexander, however, is expressed so clearly and absolutely in this moment that I would now say that while yes, she is ambitious and hates Philip, I think she genuinely wants the best for Alexander. A mother who didn’t would not have thought or cared to to play that simple yet highly meaningful game.
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Speaking of Philip the mood turns sour when he breaks into the bed chamber. I complained in the last post about how Olive Stone had treated Parmenion. Well, I have to say, he does a real hatchet job on Philip, too. He insults, and tries to force himself on her. Only Alexander’s and the snakes’ presence cause him to step back - briefly. I am not an expert on Philip but I do not recognise this version of him. If Stone was capable of giving us a more nuanced Olympias, I really don’t know why he could not have done the same with Philip.
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In the Palestra
As the scene cuts to the young Alexander, now twelve years old, wrestling in a Palestra; the elder Ptolemy tells us in voice over that he believes it was ‘in friendship that Alexander found his sanity’. It is no accident, I think, that as he says this, the camera closes in on Alexander wrestling Hephaestion. Alexander had other friends, of course, but whether or not we regard them as being lovers, he had no friend like Hephaestion.
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Brian Blessed leads the wrestling class and we see him walk around giving advice to the boys. At the beginning of the next scene, the elder Ptolemy reminds us (in voice over) of the famous saying that Alexander was only ever beaten once - by Hephaestion’s thighs. I rather like Blessed’s comment to the young Ptolemy, however, when he reminds him that in order to fight well he doesn’t ‘need to eat every day or until [he is] full’. I can’t help but feel that this is a nod to the fact that the later Ptolemys (from Ptolemy II Philadelphus onwards) were often overweight.

Ptolemy II and his sister-wife, Arsinoë II

Mieza
In a way, this scene - where we see Alexander and his friends being taught by Aristotle - is a difficult one to respect as it is less about the individuals present and more about Aristotle’s thought and examples of Greek prejudice in the middle of the fourth century BC. Thus, we hear a lot about the importance of reason ruling over passion, and effeminate Persians.
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To be fair, Stone does use this scene to set up Alexander’s decline later in the film. For example, the philosopher tells Alexander and his friends that the Persians’ ‘slavish devotion to their senses’ causes them to ‘castrate young boys such as yourselves for their sexual pleasure.’ These words are met with dismissive laughter. Clearly, when Alexander gets into bed with the eunuch Bagoas later on, we are meant to see this as an example of his Medising, going native. Curiously, although in the context of the film this is a bad thing, leaving aside the fact that Bagoas is a eunuch, many people will today think that a expression of same-sex love is a good thing. It is good that we are challenged to see Alexander’s actions as his contemporaries saw them and not as we (might) do.
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I think there is also in this scene a subtle acknowledgement of the nature of Alexander’s relationship with Hephaestion. When Hephaestion asks Aristotle if a man can love a woman equally he dismisses the possibility out of hand on the grounds that women (unlike men) are slaves to their passion. It is not hard to imagine Hephaestion taking this thought away and allowing it to inform his later romantic choices.
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Before Hephaestion’s question, Stone has Cassander ask the awkward questions about Achilles’ excessive behaviour and the possibility of his love for Patroclus being ‘a corrupting one’, which makes Alexander look askance at him. As I said in the previous post, if Stone had implied at the end of the film that Cassander was responsible for poisoning Alexander this would have been another step along establishing him as Alexander’s nemesis but he doesn’t, so the potential conflict goes nowhere.
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The Taming of Bucephalas
This lovely scene is faithful to what really happened (as I remember it, that is) in respect of how Alexander managed to tame Bucephalas, the horse who was afraid of his shadow. The scene does manage to be a little anachronistic in that Stone places Philip’s future wife, Cleopatra Euridike in it. No date is given for the taming of Bucephalas* but as Alexander is still a young boy we can assume it is before 346 when he would be ten. From the look of him, I think 347/8 would be about right. Anyway, Philip didn’t marry Cleopatra (who took the name Euridike after marrying him) until 338/7. Yet, here she is, with her uncle Attalus in tow, already his wife several years earlier. The reason for Euridike’s and Attalus’ appearance is to introduce the divisive figure whom Alexander will confront at the party a few years later. This is the kind of change that one can allow because it helps the narrative. It’s a shame Stone didn’t limit himself thus (I’m still sore over his treatment of Philip, and about to get sorer…).
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In the Caves at Pella
After Philip and Olympias’ confrontation in the bed chamber there won’t be many people who will be cheering for the king by the time he takes Alexander to see the cave art. And after his misogynistic screed in this scene (“It’s never easy to escape our mothers, Alexander. All your life, beware of women. They’re far more dangerous than men… [Olympias] makes you weak.” and so on) even fewer will be supporting him. A big shame. Neither Philip nor Olympias were perfect. If anything, Olympias committed the worst crimes.
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I mentioned at the start of this post the curiously Christian nature of Alexander offering Zeus his ring. As Philip leads the young Alexander out of the cave, having depressed himself it seems more than the boy with his crash course in how Men hate the gods but are condemned to be dealt ever harshly by the immortals, he tells his son that, “[o]ne day, things will change. Men will change. But first, the gods must change.” Truly, Philip is a prophet. I’m all for foreshadowings of the future but it would be good if they were rooted in the present moment (of the character’s life). Casting Philip as a kind of prophet doesn’t really sit well for me. What he says would more appropriately (for me, anyway) come from Alexander who, as I have said before, did help the spread of Christianity by his spread of hellenism.
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* Plutarch places it in 344. I know that Alexander was never very tall but I can’t believe he is as old as 12 in this scene
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Read the index of posts in this series here