Queering Holmes

That, and most of our survivals are filtered through the explicitly Christian [edit: or Islamic, where some went even further afield] societies that came afterwards, which would not have preserved anything too problematic and, in fact, in at least one of the mediaeval versions of the romances carefully rewrote things to make it very clear that Alexander and Hephaestion were JUST FRIENDS. FRIENDS. TOTALLY NOT SCREWING EACH OTHER, BECAUSE ALEXANDER WAS AWESOME AND THAT WOULD BE SINFUL.

Which, you can't make the argument that because it doesn't exist, it was there! but it makes it even more difficult to even speculate what WAS there before the culture that came afterwards seriously disapproved.