#lanike

[thedawner]

Doodled a char I recently got

[jeannereames]

What was Alexander's relationship, if there was enough interaction that he would remember, with Lanike like (I don't know if that's how her name was spelled)? Would it be different or similar, or nothing at all, to what someone feels for their mother? Was Alexander the type to form lasting bonds with people? Mary Renault wrote him as affectionate and loving with people, but I honestly don't really know what to believe when I read about him. Things are usually conflicting, or as I've come to realize, made up entirely.

Thanks!

Lanike, Alexander's Affections and Royal Eugetism

There are really two questions here, so let me deal with the larger one first: Alexander’s ability to feel real affection.

I don’t think his reputation for forming intense bonds with people is false, or even much exaggerated. Nor is his tendency to fly off the handle in a rage. These are, really, two sides of one coin.*

In general, the Greeks were (and still are) more emotionally expressive than most Anglophone societies. Furthermore, in ancient Greece, to help one’s friends and hurt one’s enemies was considered model ethical behavior. Both Alexander and his father Philip were actively competitive in displays of generosity. The times they act uncharacteristically like a bull in a China shop are part of constructed narratives meant to make them conform to ideas about barbarian tyrants, particularly in the hands of later Roman authors such as Curtius, but also Plutarch of the Second Sophistic. Or with Philip, Demosthenes’ and Theopompos’ need to portray Philip as a despot who Tyche (Fortune) allowed to beat the Truly Hellenic Athens/South Greece. So, when they seem to act weirdly against their own diplomatic interests, perhaps consider the source. (Literally. Consider the source, and when he was writing.)

Macedonia, in contrast to (some of) the cities to the south such as Athens who had sumptuary laws, was a gift-exchange society. For that matter, so was earlier (Archaic and prior) Greece, as well as other city-states (not-Athens). One achieved more honor and fame for how much one gave away, not necessarily how much one had.

Generosity made the Man. It also made the Woman. An important social function of the wives of Macedonian kings, as well as of other wealthy citizens in Macedonia and elsewhere (including into the Hellenistic and later Roman eras), was to give donations to this or that city project, temple, building, etc.

Eurgetism.

By all accounts, Alexander took real joy in giving things away. Sometimes lavishly. This cemented his status as The Bestest King in the Whole Wide World. Certainly the richest. Near the end of his life, he spent ridiculous amounts of money every evening just on royal suppers.

ALL of this is about Display as Status. As well as rules of hospitality.

I explain all that to help give some cultural context to Alexander’s fabled generosity. Yes, I think it was very real. It was also absolutely culturally expected of him.

So his reputation for honoring friends and allies in lavish ways shouldn’t be unexpected. He also appears to have been affectionate and even thoughtful towards those he considered friends and allies. Ergo, I think his affection for his childhood nurse would be quite genuine.

Now to the second question, which involves the role a nurse had in an infant’s life…. In cultures that strongly emphasize the nuclear family, and for those of us who didn’t grow up wealthy enough to have “house staff,” it may feel unclear how to understand the role of a wetnurse. So let’s quickly frame that role in traditional Greek (and Macedonian) society.

Wetnurses were typically either slave women or from poor families who needed to supplement income. That Alexander had a noblewoman as a wetnurse was extraordinary. (Just as it was to have a prince [of Epiros] as a lesson-master.)

Ancient Greece had two “house-slave” categories devoted to the caretaking of children: the wet-nurse and the paidogogos (pedagogue). The former was, for wealthier families, the caretaker of children of both genders while the mother saw to the business of running an estate (or at least a larger farm). The paidogogos, however, was exclusively for male children old enough to leave the home (go to school, to the gymnasion, etc.), largely as a baby-sitter, to keep the kid out of trouble. There appears to have been genuine affection between some children and their slave caretakers. But also examples of wetnurses and paidogogoi who just didn’t give two figs. No doubt this reflected how they were, themselves, treated by their owners. (And that could devolve into a complicated discussion about slavery in antiquity, but… go and read my friend and colleague, Peter Hunt’s book, Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery.)

In Alexander’s case, these individuals weren’t slaves, which simplified (and complicated) his relationships with them. On the one hand, it removed the utter dependence/lack of autonomy any slave (however well-treated) would have experienced. But—as with the institution of the Pages, who were nobility doing slave work as body-servants to the king—it involved the “reduction” of elites to unfree occupations. That hovered between honor and humiliation. It’s an honor because he's royalty, but….

For most of us, who, again, didn’t grow up wealthy, having “house staff” is unfamiliar. Ergo, the complicated dynamics of such is equally unfamiliar. That said, I think seeing the wetnurse as another mother may not be the best analogy (except in cases where the mother might really have been distant/absent).

I’d compare it to AUNTIES. A lot of societies have aunties (both literal and honorary) who play super-important roles in children’s lives. Those aunties may even have children of their own (cousins, again literal and honorary), but that doesn’t lessen their impact on their nieces and nephews. Or how they can be loved in a way similar to, but different than a mother. (Or how they can be exasperating in a way similar to, but different than a mother!)

So, for many of us, probably the best analogy for Lanike’s role in Alexander’s life would be a beloved auntie.

* This is also why I find attempts to paint him as a psychopath/sociopath or megalomaniac (e.g., narcissistic personality disorder) unfounded. A characteristic of both is inability to empathize or have strong emotions for people outside the self (and occasionally a very few select others). If he were any of those, he’d manipulate the hell out of people, but not feel much himself. His affections and rages seem far too spontaneous for that.

[amleto22-blog]

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