HEPHYESTION, son of Amyntor, a Macedonian of Pella, is celebrated as the friend of Alexander the Great. The two, according to Quintius Curtius (iii. 12), were companions in childhood, but beyond this old-standing connexion we find no evidence of such qualities in Hephmstion as deserved the passionate attachment of Alexander. The king, however, seems never to have been blind to his real character, and to have made a marked distinction between him, as the friend of his private life and his leisure hours, and such men as Craterus, whom he could entrust with important enterprises. We do not hear again of Hephms-tion till 331 B.C., when he accompanied the king on his visit to Troy. Many tales are told of the close intimacy subsisting between them ; for example, Plutarch says that, when a letter of very delicate and private nature from Olympias was handed to Alexander, Hephmstion according to his custom was reading it over his shoulder, when Alexander without uttering a word took his ring of his finger and pressed it on his friend's lips. In the later campaigns of Alexander in Bactria and India, we find Hephmstion charged with important commands. He was rewarded with a golden crown and the hand of Drypetis, the daughter of Darius and sister of Alexander's own wife Statira (324 n.c.). In the end of the same year he died very suddenly at Ecbatana. Alexander tried to relieve his grief by raying the most extravagant honours to his friend. A general mourning was ordered over Asia; at Babylon a funeral pile was erected at a cost of 10,000 talents ; and temples were erected to him as a hero.