Published 1973 – pp numbers from Penguin edition. Set in the 4th century BC
[The Persian Boy is Bagoas, favourite of Alexander the Great]
[ch 10] The suit of clothes… were of fine cloth, a loose coat of dark red, blue trousers and embroidered slippers…
[ch 13] For my costume, I ordered a Greek-style tunic, made all of scarlet ribbons, caught together just at the neck and waist… I had anklets sewn with round tinkling rattles of beaten gold…
[ch 17] I had my new suit made in deep red, embroidered with gold spangled flowers. The buttons were jewelled roses. I put it away to wear when he [Alexander] came back.
I should soon be twenty. Alone in my tent, I often looked in the mirror. For people like me, it is a dangerous age…
[ch 20] I had been wearing my coat of the silk from Marakanda, with its flying serpents and flowers. Its blue gleam caught my eye… the buttons were of a pale green stone, heavy and cool to touch, carved with magic signs.
[ch 24] I wore white striped with green, and started with little tinkling finger-bells for the mountain stream…
observations: Should be read in conjunction with this earlier entry.
Bagoas is personal servant to and lover of Alexander the Great, and is also a eunuch and a dancer. His beauty is his capital, so naturally he is very interested in what he wears.
An oddity of the novel is that Bagoas and Alexander do not meet till a hundred pages in. Apparently this was part of a very specific plan by Renault, according to her biographer, David Sweetman:
The plot itself is a seduction, the first third taken up with the slow advance of Alexander…[he] advances like a lover, courting the object of his desire…
- which is the Persian Empire. Bagoas is merely symbolic in this respect.
Sweetman also says that Renault considered that Bagoas would have looked like a Michelangelo sculpture of a slave – I’m guessing this one from the Louvre:
The voice of Bagoas is very well done in the book: funny, slightly camp, charmingly manipulative, loving. He is respectful of his and Alexander’s importance, but sometimes endearingly realistic – this unlikely character is rather a tour de force, a triumph of Renault’s imagination.
The top picture is from a manuscript at the Walters Museum in Baltimore, and shows a Persian court scene with music and dancing. The Museum (which has generously made its collection available under a Creative Commons licence) has some lovely, mostly Persian, manuscripts with illustrations from Alexander’s life – see for example him mourning Darius and enthroned at Persopolis. As mentioned before, we are more used to seeing Alexander as very Western.
Links on the blog: Earlier entry here. Alexander in the book likes to read Herodotus. We would find it hard to choose between Bagoas and Bucephalas as historian of Alexander’s life.
The top picture is from a manuscript at the Walters Museum in Baltimore, and shows a Persian court scene with music and dancing. The Museum (which has generously made its collection available under a Creative Commons licence) has some lovely, mostly Persian, manuscripts with illustrations from Alexander’s life – see for example him mourning Darius and enthroned at Persopolis. As mentioned before, we are more used to seeing Alexander as very Western.
Links on the blog: Earlier entry here. Alexander in the book likes to read Herodotus. We would find it hard to choose between Bagoas and Bucephalas as historian of Alexander’s life.
Moira - Oh, yes, I recall your earlier entry! And the character of Bagoas really sounds very interesting. All that, history and wit too? What's not to like.
ReplyDeleteThis book is such a favourite of mine - I have read it many times and it always enchants me...
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