The Way of the (Ancient) World

The exact date of Alexander the Great’s death is not known but it appears to have been either today, 10th June, or tomorrow, in 323 BC.
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In this post, I would like to indulge in a little counter factual discussion by asking what might have happened to Alexander’s empire after his death if Hephaestion had still been living in June 323.
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The reason this question interests me is that at the time of his own death in November 324, Hephaestion held the rank of chiliarch, meaning that he was Alexander’s deputy. Had he lived, therefore, it would have been him assigning satrapies to Alexander’s senior officers in June 323 rather than his successor in that office, Perdiccas.
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So, what might have happened?
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I see no reason to think that the same men would not have got the same offices, barring changes here and there, that they got in real settlement. The key difference would have been ideological. I am certain that Hephaestion, unlike Perdiccas, will have wanted Alexander IV to ascend to his throne in the fullness of time. Perhaps Hephaestion would also have continued Alexander’s integrationist policies out of loyalty to his friend’s ideals.
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Of course, Hephaestion would have had to have stayed alive in order to see his - Alexander’s - legacy secured, but he was as good a soldier as any in Alexander’s high command. His relationship to the late king was probably unorthodox - it wasn’t the done thing for adult men to be in a sexual relationship with one another in those days - but I am sure that with a good propagandist Hephaestion could have convinced the army, which was pro-Argead, to support him. Certainly, so far as staying alive is concerned, he would never have made the same mistake as Perdiccas did outside Memphis.
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In other words, I believe that had Hephaestion gone to war against Ptolemy as Perdiccas did, or tried to do, there is no reason to believe that he would not have seen it through, and once he controlled Egypt… well, Ptolemy did alright from there, didn’t he?
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In fact, Ptolemy was so well entrenched in Egypt that he survived a catastrophic mauling at the hands of Demetrius Poliorcetes in 306 during the fourth diadoch war. Ptolemy lost half of his armed forces and control of the Aegean in the naval battle for Cyprus but to the best of my knowledge did not face any challenge to his authority in Egypt. Antigonus Monophthalmus and Demetrius subsequently tried to invade Egypt with a huge - 90,000 strong - army but the Ptolemaic defences were still too strong for them.
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Again, if Ptolemy - a man with considerably less high level military experience than Hephaestion - could manage that, then why not/how much more Patroclus himself?
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The above notwithstanding, the ability to fight well would not have been enough to see Alexander IV to the throne. I suspect Hephaestion would have needed to have make a few deals along the way as well - especially since what really happened after Alexander’s death shows that very few of the Successors - perhaps only Eumenes, and maybe Craterus (?) - had any interest in seeing Alexander IV come to the throne. None so far as I can tell had any time for the late king’s integrationist policies. Hephaestion was a seasoned diplomat, though, and I am sure he would have held his own on the negotiating table. Not that treaties in those days seemed to have been worth the papyrus or clay that they were written on. With the right cunning, though, Hephaestion could easily have worked even that to his advantage.
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Had Philip Arrhidaeus and Alexander IV died anyway, could Hephaestion have reunited Alexander’s empire under his own name? I am determined to say ‘yes’ to this. The two men who really came closest to doing so - Antigonus Monophthalmus and Seleucus - were, in Alexander’s lifetime, high ranking officers but no more special than any of the others. We hardly see Antigonus at all since he got left behind in Asia Minor at the start of the anabasis. As with Ptolemy, If they nearly managed it, I see no reason why Hephaestion could not have done. I must admit, though, I doubt he would have proved any more successful than Seleucus at holding back the Indian conqueror, Chandragupta.
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Such questions! And all, ultimately, unanswerable ones. For sadly, Hephaestion died eight months before Alexander. Still, we can dream. And if we feel that dreaming of what might have been is too hard or simply useless then perhaps we might dream instead about Achilles and Patroclus in Elysium, at play in the land of the gods.