"They wouldn't have dared make a movie with such (homosexual) reproaches about Moses or Solomon," said Yiorgos Karatzaferis, president and European Parliament member for far-right, xenophobic party LAOS.
"Who's afraid of Stone's Alexander?," conservative daily Kathimerini asked on the front page of its weekend supplement, summing up the anxiety with which Greeks anticipated the film.
Modern Greeks are extremely sensitive to what foreigners say or think about them. History is a key ingredient of their national identity and fears abound that Stone has depicted their most revered national hero as a blood-thirsty, barbarian gay of foreign descent.
"Homosexual relations were frequent in antiquity ... we didn't try to present Alexander as a Californian gay," said Robin Lane Fox, a British historian who served as Stone's history advisor, in an interview with Kathimerini.
"Alexander was Greek," added the 55-year old academic, who wrote a celebrated book on the King of Macedon back in 1973.
This drew nationalist ire in Greece's northern neighbor, Macedonia, much of whose Slav and Albanian population claim Alexander as part of their own national heritage.
Greece refuses to recognize the former Yugoslav republic as "Macedonia" for fear that the name implies territorial claims on the adjacent, same-name northern Greek province, where the ruins of ancient Macedon's cities and shrines are located.
Barrymore no more
Acting dynasty scion John Barrymore, the father of Hollywood darling Drew Barrymore, has died at the age of 72, his daughter's spokesman announced on Tuesday.
The troubled actor, who had faced alcohol and drug addictions, died in Los Angeles on Monday, representatives said, but no cause of death was immediately available.
"He was a cool cat," Drew Barrymore said in a statement released by her publicist. "Please smile when you think of him."
John Barrymore, the son of a legendary golden-age star also called John Barrymore and nephew of Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, entered the family business in the 1950s but never enjoyed the success of his famous forebears or daughter.
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