Our group likes this author because she writes well and empathetically. Maybe also because she was educated in this city and also because her book The Charioteer is set here.
Bagoas tells the story of the last seven years of Alexander the Great’s life through the eyes of his lover. He’d been sent to a smelly man, not sent back when whipped as damaged goods, had to undertake certain tastes which made him sick as he associates a man with them, he was sold without consultation, found naked bathing uncivilised, as he did gossip and he had no friends. only patrons.
Of Alexander: ‘There goes my Lord. I was born to follow.’ He sucks his wound, says that love is the greatest physician, shaves him and combs his hair. ‘I saw him wake from a brief sleep and endure remembrance’ –about Alexander after the death of Hephaiston.
He can’t read and he jealous of Hephaiston and thinks of poisoning him.
Alexander goes with women to prove he is a man. His is a large company on the move, with no child, brief visits to his wife and is a gentle lover yet aggressive in battle
Is this an intentional pun: p. 333 ‘escort found no seamen’?
Later, we read another book on a similar subject: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Gay Men's Book Group, Bristol 