Alexander pouting after Hephaiston had grown a moustache.

Alexander the Great, known by his closest friends a Αλέξανδρος ο Μέγας or AM-PM, conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks. Hannibal, who crossed the Alps in 218 BC, took great comfort in knowing that Alexander, who died in 323 BC, would never know that Hannibal crossed the Alps with eleven elephants but that none of the offspring survived. One can only speculate as to whether Hannibal had read of Alexander’s crossing of the Hindu Kush 110 years earlier or his Treatise on the Care and Feeding of Pachyderms.

About Hephaestion: Hephaestion was a closet (sic) friend of Alexander, who called him ‘my Patroclus’ (the friend of Achilles) and, on other occasions ‘my filos Giatros Loukaniko’ (the friend of Doctor Salami). His services were rewarded in 324 BC with a golden crown and marriage to Alexander’s sister-in-law Drypetis, the Empire’s culinary seer and owner of 90 percent of the bean fields across Macedonia and all of northwestern Iran. He died suddenly in the same year at Ecbatana, the capital of ancient Media, of terminal flatulence. His body exploded while being cremated in Babylon on a huge pyre designed by the architect Deinocrates and a temple built in his honour was destroyed. Source: The Leesopedia “Hephaestion: Above and Behind the Call of Duty.”