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A PERSIAN MARRIAGE FEAST IN MACEDON? (HERODOTUS 5.17–21)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2019

Thomas Harrison
Thomas Harrison*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
*
tehh@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Extract

Herodotus’ fateful tale of the seven Persian emissaries sent to seek Earth and Water from the Macedonian king Amyntes has been the subject of increasingly rich discussion in recent years. Generations of commentators have cumulatively revealed the ironies of Herodotus’ account: its repeated hints, for example, of the Persians’ eventual end; and, crowning all other ironies, the story's ending: that, after resisting the indignity of his female relatives being molested at a banquet, and disposing of all trace of the Persian ambassadors and their party, Alexander of Macedon then arranges his sister's marriage to the leader of the search party sent to investigate his disappeared compatriots (Hdt. 5.21.2). More recent readings have gone further in uncovering the mythological archetypes for the logos, or in tracing its exploration of a number of themes: revenge, guest-friendship, the equation of sexual and military conquest, or the ‘explosion of violence resulting from the contact of two different cultures’. Most fruitful perhaps have been those readings that have seen the logos no longer as a detached ‘short story’ but in its wider context in the Histories: David Fearn, for example, has stressed the need to understand the presentation of Alexander I in the light of what the reader knows of his subsequent history.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 507 - 514
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2019

Herodotus’ fateful tale of the seven Persian emissaries sent to seek Earth and Water from the Macedonian king Amyntes has been the subject of increasingly rich discussion in recent years.Footnote 1 Generations of commentators have cumulatively revealed the ironies of Herodotus’ account: its repeated hints, for example, of the Persians’ eventual end;Footnote 2 and, crowning all other ironies, the story's ending: that, after resisting the indignity of his female relatives being molested at a banquet, and disposing of all trace of the Persian ambassadors and their party, Alexander of Macedon then arranges his sister's marriage to the leader of the search party sent to investigate his disappeared compatriots (Hdt. 5.21.2).Footnote 3 More recent readings have gone further in uncovering the mythological archetypes for the logos,Footnote 4 or in tracing its exploration of a number of themes: revenge,Footnote 5 guest-friendship,Footnote 6 the equation of sexual and military conquest,Footnote 7 or the ‘explosion of violence resulting from the contact of two different cultures’.Footnote 8 Most fruitful perhaps have been those readings that have seen the logos no longer as a detached ‘short story’ but in its wider context in the Histories: David Fearn, for example, has stressed the need to understand the presentation of Alexander I in the light of what the reader knows of his subsequent history.Footnote 9

Historical interpretation, by contrast, has centred narrowly on the historicity of the episode. ‘Fortunately’, wrote Ernst Badian, ‘no one has believed the tale.’Footnote 10 Though there may be disagreements over details here (most prominently perhaps the date of Alexander's marriage of his sister Gygaie to Boubares, or whether his father Amyntes bore any culpability for Macedonian medism)Footnote 11 historians have been largely united in concluding the whole episode to be a transparent fabrication, designed to distract from the Macedonians’ close relations with Persia.Footnote 12 For Elizabeth Carney, the story represents an attempt not only to assert ‘Argead political correctness in matters Hellenic’ but also to ‘demonstrate cultural correctness in matters Hellenic as well, to convince Athenians and others that the women of the royal family were just as secluded as the most respectable Athenian housewife, unlikely though this was to have been true’.Footnote 13

The passage's contrast of Greek and Persian sympotic practice has also been rejected by commentators, on the basis (as George Rawlinson put it in terms characteristic of his time)Footnote 14 that the ‘seclusion of the women was as much practised by the Persians as by any other Orientals’. As Plutarch attests (in a commonly cited passage),Footnote 15 the Persians did not get drunk or dance with their wives but only with their concubines (ὀρθῶς φασι μὴ ταῖς γαμεταῖς ἀλλὰ ταῖς παλλακέσι συμμεθύσκεσθαι καὶ συνορχεῖσθαι, Plut. Mor. 613Α). Either then (as Rawlinson puts it), ‘the speakers’, that is, the Persian ambassadors, ‘must have presumed greatly upon the ignorance of Persian customs’ of their Macedonian hosts, or (if Herodotus knew of the reality of Persian customs) the story is intended as illustrative of their bad behaviour away from home.Footnote 16

***

Here I offer an additional dimension to the passage, one which is complimentary to most recent readings, but which suggests very different historical implications: that—despite its ostensibly Greek ‘colouring’Footnote 17—Herodotus’ Macedonian banquet reflects, in distorted fashion, the memory of a large-scale marriage of Persian and Macedonian elites. This possibility was mooted briefly in a note by George Cawkwell forty years ago, but neither argued for nor developed by subsequent scholars.Footnote 18

The basis for this suggestion is a pattern of parallels with our main surviving account of Persian marriage, again in a Macedonian context: Arrian's version of Alexander the Great's mass marriage (in Susa in 324) of the noblest daughters of the Persians and the Medes to eighty of his companions (Arr. Anab. 7.4–8).Footnote 19 For Arrian, Persian marriage consisted in three steps: the drinking of toasts, the introduction of the brides seated alongside their grooms, and the grooms’ taking of their brides by the hand and kissing them (Arr. Anab. 7.4.7).

οἱ γάμοι δὲ ἐποιήθησαν νόμῳ τῷ Περσικῷ· θρόνοι ἑτέθησαν τοῖς νυμφίοις ἐφεξῆς καὶ μετὰ τὸν πότον ἧκον αἱ γαμούμεναι καὶ παρεκαθέζοντο ἑκάστη τῷ ἑαυτῆς· οἱ δὲ ἐδεξιώσαντό τε αὐτὰς καὶ ἐφίλησαν· πρῶτος δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἦρξεν· ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ γὰρ πάντων ἐγίγνοντο οἱ γάμοι. καὶ τοῦτο, εἴπερ τι ἄλλο, ἔδοξε δημοτικόν τε καὶ φιλέταιρον πρᾶξαι Ἀλέξανδρον.

These weddings were solemnized in the Persian style; chairs were placed for the bridegrooms in order, then, after the healths had been drunk, the brides came in and each sat down by the side of her bridegroom, and the men took them by the hand and kissed them, the king setting the example, for all the weddings took place together. None of Alexander's actions was thought to show more affability and comradeship (transl. P.A. Brunt).

All three steps can be identified—albeit in travestied form—in Herodotus’ account of the Persian embassy to Macedonia.

  1. (1) In line with the Persians’ broader reputation in Greek sources (Hdt. 1.133.3–4, Arr. Anab. 4.8.2, Ael. VH 12.1), the drinking of a ritualized toast takes the form of a competitive, and undignified, heavy drinking.Footnote 20 When they make their initial request—that the Macedonians should follow their custom on the occasion of great dinners, that concubines and wedded wives be introduced—they do so διαπίνοντες, a term suggestive of competitive drinking (5.18.2). By the time that they begin to grasp at the women's breasts, they are even more well lubricated (πλεόνως οἰνωμένοι, 5.18.5).

  2. (2) The women's introduction to the banquet is staggered. First, in response to the Persians’ first request, Amyntes brings the women in; only, as a concession to the Macedonians’ own custom of the separation of men and women (κεχωρίσθαι ἄνδρας γυναικῶν, 5.18.3), he seats them opposite to the Persians instead (ἀντίαι ἵζοντο τοῖσι Πέρσῃσι). Secondly, in response to the Persians’ complaint—that ‘it would have been better if they had not come at all than, coming, sat not next to them but opposite and pain their eyes’Footnote 21 (κρέσσον γὰρ εἶναι ἀρχῆθεν μὴ ἐλθεῖν τὰς γυναῖκας ἢ ἐλθούσας καὶ μὴ παριζομένας ἀντίας ἵζεσθαι ἀλγηδόνας σφίσι ὀφθαλμῶν, 5.18.4)—Amyntes concedes under compulsion and orders them to sit next to the Persians (ἀναγκαζόμενος δὲ ὁ Ἀμύντης ἐκέλευε παρίζειν, 5.18.5). Finally, after Alexander withdraws the women to be washed and made ready,Footnote 22 he introduces in their stead an equal number of smooth-chinned young men in drag, with daggers concealed (5.20.4), and seats a Persian man next to a Macedonian man, their juxtaposition underlined by a chiastic word order (παρίζει Πέρσῃ ἀνδρὶ ἄνδρα Μακεδόνα ὡς γυναῖκα τῷ λόγῳ, 5.20.5).

  3. (3) The third step in the Persian marriage ceremony, according to Arrian—the groom's taking of his bride by the hand and kissing her—is transformed again into the ultimate affront: the touching not of the women's hands but of their breasts, and the attempt even to kiss them (τις καὶ φιλέειν ἐπειρᾶτο, 5.18.5).Footnote 23

The parallels between Herodotus’ Macedonian banquet and Alexander's Susa weddings are corroborated then by a passage of Plutarch's Advice to Bride and Groom that seems to represent an expanded version of the Plutarchan passage which is commonly cited to confirm the ahistoricity of Herodotus’ seating arrangements (Plut. Mor. 140B):

τοῖς τῶν Περσῶν βασιλεῦσιν αἱ γνήσιαι γυναῖκες παρακάθηνται δειπνοῦσι καὶ συνεστιῶνται· βουλόμενοι δὲ παίζειν καὶ μεθύσκεσθαι ταύτας μὲν ἀποπέμπουσι, τὰς δὲ μουσουργοὺς καὶ παλλακίδας καλοῦσιν, ὀρθῶς τοῦτο γ’αὐτὸ ποιοῦντες, ὅτι τοῦ συνακολασταίνειν καὶ παροινεῖν οὐ μεταδιδόασι ταῖς γαμεταῖς.

The lawful wives of the Persian kings sit beside them at dinner, and eat with them. But when the kings wish to be merry and get drunk, they send their wives away, and send for their music-girls and concubines. In so far they are right in what they do, because they do not concede any share in their licentiousness and debauchery to their wedded wives.

Although the tradition does not purport to be an account of a Persian marriage ceremony, the association of legitimate marriage with husband and wife being seated beside one another is strong.Footnote 24 Other sources reflect a similar concern with dining etiquette, and with the distinction between wives and concubines, at the royal court. Plutarch's Artaxerxes describes how no one shared the Persian king's table except his mother or wife (Plut. Artax. 5.3).Footnote 25 A famous fragment of Heracleides of Cyme describes a complex series of taboos surrounding both royal dinners and symposia, including the custom that the king may dine with his wife and some of his sons, but that his concubines offer musical entertainment (FGrHist 689 F 2). It is perhaps striking also that, in the opening banquet of the Book of Esther, where drinking, we are told, was unrestricted, Queen Vashti gives a separate banquet for women (Esther 1.8–9). To return then to the remarks of Rawlinson quoted above, the Persian speakers may indeed have flouted their own nomos by asking for both concubines and wedded wives to be brought in to sit beside them (τὰς παλλακὰς καὶ τὰς κουριδίας γυναῖκας ἐσάγεσθαι παρέδρους, 5.18.2); it seems clear, however, if so, that Herodotus was very aware of the importance of the distinction between legitimate wives and concubines in making the Persian ambassadors so deliberately insist on both.

***

What are the consequences of this reading? It is possible, of course, that the story reflects not the distorted memory of an actual marriage but, rather, the rejection of the idea of a marriage alliance; that a story generated to project the Macedonian court's distance from any Persian contamination has merely taken the convenient story-form of a mass marriage gone awry. The circumstantial details surrounding Alexander's eventual marriage of his sister Gygaie to Boubares, or Herodotus’ notice that their son Amyntes was given the city of Alabanda in Phrygia for his revenue (8.136.1),Footnote 26 make it greatly more likely, however, that the story is the doublet—one with an anti-medizing twist—of a historical marriage. Whether this historical marriage (a marriage of Boubares and Gygaie and of other members of the Macedonian and Persian elites)Footnote 27 took place in the reign of Amyntes, or has merely been projected back to distance Alexander from some of the taint,Footnote 28 is impossible to say for certain—although the identification of Boubares as the son of the same Megabazus who was left in Thrace in the wake of Darius’ Scythian campaign is compelling evidence for an earlier date.Footnote 29 So long, however, as we accept Arrian's account of the distinctive aspects of Persian marriage as authentic,Footnote 30 then the closeness of the parallels, and the fixation in Herodotus’ logos on the precise pattern of seating, suggest unanswerably that a distinctively Persian marriage (whether historical or not) lies at the heart of the story. As for the source of the story, the pattern of elaboration on authentic details of Persian custom make it surely much more likely to have been the product of oral deformation, generated by analogy to the traditions of the Spartan and Athenian killing of Persian heralds (7.134–7; cf. Plut. Them. 6.4),Footnote 31 than of deliberate misinformation—let alone the result of Alexander's own charm offensive on Herodotus, as suggested by Hammond and Griffith.Footnote 32

The parallels between Herodotus’ Macedonian banquet and the Susa weddings also have implications for Persian practice. Together with the pattern of exploration prior to conquest,Footnote 33 requests for earth and water (6.48–9), and the coordinated ventriloquizing of local traditions,Footnote 34 these parallels suggest strongly that such large-scale marriages may have represented a more widespread approach to the integration of the empire through the creation of a mixed ethnic elite—albeit, perhaps, at one remove from a more exclusively Persian inner core.Footnote 35 In the case of Amyntes, the son of Boubares, this strategy appears to have been successful—even if there may have been greater plans for him (that is, that he would become a ‘hyparch’ or satrap of Macedonia in his turn).Footnote 36 If Alexander made innovations to this tradition, innovations born of his different circumstances, it may have been primarily in the scope of his attempted integration, which involved the family of both Darius III and Artaxerxes Ochus as well as the satrap of Media and others (Arr. Anab. 7.4.4–6).Footnote 37

The wider evidence for (non-nuptial) Persian feasts suggests also that the pragmatic purpose of the integration of a ruling elite was underpinned by a powerful body of ideas: that it was not only the practices of his Achaemenid predecessors that Alexander inherited but much of their imperial ideology.Footnote 38 Central here is the pattern of seating: the matching of a Persian and a Greek on each couch at the banquet of Attaginus at Thebes (9.15.4–9.16.5), or the concentric pattern of Alexander's Opis banquet (with Macedonians around him, then Persians and ‘then any persons from the other peoples who took precedence for rank or any other high quality’, Arr. Anab. 7.11.8),Footnote 39 a pattern adapted in turn by Peucestas at Persepolis.Footnote 40 The emphasis in Arrian's account of the Opis banquet on virtue is uncannily reminiscent of Herodotus’ description of how the Persians honour foreign peoples in proportion to their proximity to the Persian centre (1.134.2): a concentric pattern that is again underpinned by beliefs of superior virtue (they consider themselves by far the best of men in all respects, 1.134.3).Footnote 41 Xenophon in his Cyropaedia also establishes a relationship between virtue and seating placement in the Persian court, with the king, placing the most honoured guest on his left, the next most on the right, and so on in alternation (Xen. Cyr. 8.4.3–5)—but never assigning the same places permanently, instead making it a rule ‘that by noble deeds any one might advance to a more honoured seat, and that if anyone should conduct himself ill he should go back to one less honoured’.Footnote 42 (This custom, he concludes, ‘continues in force even down to our own times’.) This physical representation of the unity in diversity of the Persian court also arguably finds its corollary in Achaemenid art: for example in the alternating figures of Medes and Persians on the north stairs of the Apadana at Persepolis, their hands interlocked in gestures suggesting a ‘mannered courtly intimacy’.Footnote 43

At Opis, Alexander ‘prayed for various blessings and especially that the Macedonians and the Persians should enjoy harmony as partners in the government’ (εὔχετο δὲ τά τε ἄλλα [καὶ τὰ] ἀγαθὰ καὶ ὁμόνοιάν τε καὶ κοινωνίαν τῆς ἀρχῆς Μακεδόσι καὶ Πέρσαις, Arr. Anab. 7.11.9). (It was on the foundation of this passage that W.W. Tarn credited Alexander with ‘one of the supreme revolutions of the world's outlook’: his philosophy of the unity of mankind.)Footnote 44 At Opis, as in Persian imperial ideology more broadly, this emphasis on partnership and unity was balanced by a clear sense of hierarchy.Footnote 45 But, behind the story of the Persian embassy to Macedon, or the ‘lugubrious unity’Footnote 46 of Attaginus’ banquet in Thebes, we can discern the same animating idea.Footnote 47

References

1 Most recently: Fearn, D., ‘Herodotos 5.17–22. Narrating ambiguity: murder and Macedonian allegiance’, in Irwin, E. and Greenwood, E. (edd.), Reading Herodotus: A Study of the Logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus’ Histories (Cambridge, 2007), 98–127Google Scholar; Hornblower, S. (ed.), Herodotus Histories Book V (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar.

2 So, for example, Alexander's assurance to his father that he will give his guests all that they require (πάντα τὰ ἐπιτήδεα παρέξω τοῖσι ξείνοισι, 5.19.1, with Macan, R.W., Herodotus: The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Books [London, 1895]Google Scholar, ad loc.; Hornblower [n. 1], 113), or to the Persians that ‘the hour of sleep is approaching’ (σχεδὸν γὰρ ἤδη τῆς κοίτης ὥρη προσέρξεται ὑμῖν, 5.20.2, hinting at a longer sleep: Hornblower [n. 1], 114).

3 5.21.2, with e.g. Fearn (n. 1), 103–4. All references in this format are to Herodotus unless specified.

4 Fearn (n. 1), 105–12; also (on Homeric tone) Boedeker, D., ‘Epic heritage and mythical patterns in Herodotus’, in Bakker, E.J., de Jong, I.J.F. and van Wees, H. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Herodotus (Leiden – Boston – Cologne, 2002), 97–116Google Scholar, at 106.

5 Fearn (n. 1), 106; cf. Gray, V., ‘Short stories in Herodotus’ Histories’, in Bakker, E.J., de Jong, I.J.F. and van Wees, H. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Herodotus (Leiden – Boston – Cologne, 2002), 291–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 297 for the logos as a stand-alone example of the revenge short-story.

6 Fearn (n. 1), 103 and n. 11.

7 See (in the context of this passage) Harrison, T., ‘Herodotus and the ancient Greek idea of rape’, in Deacy, S. and Pearce, K.F., Rape in Antiquity (London, 1997), 185–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 196–7; and, more broadly, for example, Hall, E., ‘Asia unmanned: images of victory in classical Athens’, in Rich, J. and Shipley, G. (edd.), War and Society in the Greek World (London, 1993), 108–33Google Scholar, at 110–13; Dover, K.J., Greek Homosexuality (London, 1978), 105Google Scholar.

8 Scaife, R., ‘Alexander I in the Histories of Herodotus’, Hermes 117 (1989), 129–37Google Scholar, at 132–3 drawing attention to the repetition of the dative ἡμῖν to ‘bring out the relative nature of νόμος᾿.

9 Fearn (n. 1), 126, an approach to reading Herodotus pioneered by C.W. Fornara e.g. in the context of his portrayal of the Spartan Pausanias: Herodotus. An Interpretative Essay (Oxford, 1971), e.g. 64–85, at 81. See also E. Baragwanath, ‘Myth and history entwined: female influence and male usurpation in Herodotus’ Histories’, in J. Baines, H. van der Blom, T. Rood and Y.S. Chen (edd.), Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World (London, forthcoming), emphasizing the connections of our logos with that of Candaules’ wife, and the deployment of a ‘mythodic discourse’, marked e.g. by the use of significant numbers.

10 Badian, E., ‘Herodotus on Alexander I of Macedon: a study in some subtle silences’, in Hornblower, S. (ed.), Greek Historiography (Oxford, 1994), 107–30Google Scholar, at 108. Contrast, however, the caution of Nenci, G., Erodoto. Libro V: La rivolta della Ionia (Milan, 1994)Google Scholar, 177 on 5.18.1; cf. also Briant, P., From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire, transl. Daniels, P.T. (Winona Lake, IN, 2002), 145Google Scholar, appearing to credit the massacre as historical.

11 The subject of contention between Badian (n. 10) and Errington, R.M., ‘Alexander the philhellene and Persia’, in Dell, H.J. (ed.), Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson (Thessaloniki, 1981), 139–43Google Scholar, at 109–12.

12 See e.g. How, W.W. and Wells, J., A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford, 1912)Google Scholar, ad loc.; Errington (n. 11), 140; Badian (n. 10), 113–14; Fearn (n. 1), 115; Sprawski, S., ‘The early Temenid kings to Alexander I’, in Roisman, J. and Worthington, I. (edd.), A Companion to Ancient Macedonia (Malden, MA, 2010), 127–44Google Scholar, at 135–6; Mari, M., ‘Archaic and early classical Macedonia’, in Fox, R. Lane (ed.), Brill's Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon 650 BC–300 AD (Leiden and Boston, 2011), 79–92Google Scholar, at 85; for historical context, also Zahrnt, M., ‘Herodot und die Makedonenkönige’, in Rollinger, R., Truschnegg, B. and Bichler, R. (edd.), Herodot und das Persische Weltreich (Wiesbaden, 2011), 761–75Google Scholar, at 763–4.

13 Carney, E.D., King and Court in Ancient Macedonia. Rivalry, Treason and Conspiracy (Swansea, 2015), 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Rawlinson, ad loc.; cf. How and Wells (n. 12), ad loc. (‘Repugnant as is the suggestion to Greek sentiment … it is even more opposed to Oriental custom’); for Rawlinson's attitudes, Harrison, T., ‘Exploring virgin fields. Henry and George Rawlinson on ancient and modern Orient’, in Almagor, E. and Skinner, J. (edd.), Ancient Ethnography. New Approaches (London, 2013), 223–55Google Scholar.

15 So, for example, Stein, H., Herodoti Historiae (Berlin, 1869–71)Google Scholar; Macan (n. 2); How and Wells (n. 12), ad loc. See also Plut. Them. 26.5 for Persian seclusion of wives and concubines.

16 Nenci (n. 10), 178 on 5.18.

17 Bowie, A.M., ‘Fate may harm me, I have dined today: near-eastern royal banquets and Greek symposia in Herodotus’, Pallas 61 (2003), 99–109Google Scholar, at 106 (a contrasting emphasis to that of Fearn [n. 1], 104–5). Flower, M.A. and Marincola, J. (edd.), Herodotus Histories Book IX (Cambridge, 2002), 126Google Scholar similarly describe the context of the banquet at Thebes (9.15.4–9.16.5), for which see below, as ‘wholly Greek and Homeric’.

18 Cawkwell, G., Philip of Macedon (London, 1978)Google Scholar, 24 n., continuing: ‘It is more likely that marriages could be disguised from the Greeks than that the disappearance of the envoys should be left unavenged by the Persians. So the precedents for Alexander's policy of fusion of races by intermarriage may include more than just the marriage of a Macedonian princess to a Persian grandee.’ Cawkwell's passing suggestion is noted by Hornblower, S., Mausolus (Oxford, 1982), 219Google Scholar and Hornblower (n. 1), ad loc.

19 See also Strabo 15.3.17 for the detail e.g. that marriages are celebrated at the vernal equinox.

20 An ironic reflection on the notice of Persian decision-making when drunk (Hdt. 1.133.3) as observed by Fearn (n. 1), 113; on this occasion, the Persians do not have the opportunity to reflect in the morning. For Persian drinking, see Briant, P., ‘Histoire et idéologie. Les Grecs et la décadence Perse’, in Mactoux, M.-M. and Geny, E. (edd.), Mélanges P. Lévêque. Vol. II Anthropologie et Société (Bésançon, 1989), 33–47Google Scholar (translated as ‘History as ideology: the Greeks and “Persian” decadence’, in T. Harrison [ed.], Greeks and Barbarians [Edinburgh, 2002], 193–210, at 203–4).

21 An ‘orientalism’, How and Wells (n. 12) suggest, on the basis of Plut. Alex. 21—a suggestion that goes back to Blakesley, J.W., Herodotus (London, 1854)Google Scholar.

22 Cf. Heracleides, FGrHist 689 F 2 for the requirement that all those who attend on the king during his banquets should bathe first.

23 The suggestion that kissing was a worse affront than ‘breast-fondling’ prompted Harrison (n. 7), 205 n. 55 to suppose that φιλέειν here means more than kissing; however, though the sense of φιλέειν may melt into other demonstrations of ‘outward signs of love’ (LSJ; cf. Dover [n. 7], 49–50), kissing is never mere kissing. As Jeffrey Henderson writes in his introduction to an anatomy of types of kiss in Attic comedy, The Maculate Muse. Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven, 1975), 181, ‘kissing often has a definitely obscene tone. The various types of kisses are treated as an aspect of sexual congress which can be made as titillating and comical as modes of intercourse’; see also V. Wohl, ‘Dirty dancing: Xenophon's Symposium’, in P. Murray and P. Wilson (edd.), Music and the Muses. The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford, 2004), 337–64, at 355 and n. 42, 358. For the sexual overtones of ἐπειρᾶτο, see especially Dover (n. 7), 45 (‘“find out what … is good for” (with the intention of following up any promising development)’).

24 For women's participation in Persian feasts, see also Brosius, M., Women in Ancient Persia 559–531 b.c. (Oxford, 1996), 94–7Google Scholar, supposing it more likely that both wives and concubines were allowed to take part, and that the distinction between concubines and wives represents a Greek interpretation (at 94–5); contrast Briant (n. 10), 278. The idea of the king and the queen as characteristically dining together could perhaps have arisen from artistic representations: Brosius, M., ‘New out of old? Court and court ceremonies in Achaemenid Persia’, in Spawforth, A.J. (ed.), The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies (Cambridge, 2007), 17–57Google Scholar, at 34 n. 36.

25 The story of Aspasia at Plut. Artax. 26.4 arguably subverts the distinction between wives and concubines, revealing Aspasia as the ‘only free and unperverted woman’ brought to Cyrus.

26 For the associated difficulties, see Hornblower (n. 18), 218–19 n. 2.

27 There is no need to take the number seven—a symbolic number in Persia, as Macan (n. 2 above) noted (on 5.17.3)—too literally (cf. the multiple uses of seven in Esther, of eunuchs [1.10], judges [1.14], chosen women [2.9]), but nor does the presence of symbolic numbers necessarily serve to condemn the whole story, as Badian (n. 10), 108 believes.

28 Errington (n. 11), especially 143.

29 Badian (n. 10), 109–12; cf. Hdt. 7.22.2 for Boubares, son of Megabazus, as one of two men given charge of the Athos canal.

30 For one detail of which Aristobulus is cited as the source: Arr. Anab. 7.4.4; Arrian reaffirms the Persian nature of the marriages at Anab. 7.6.2. Cf. Plutarch's less detailed version, Alex. 70, or the lavish detail (of the entertainments) at Ath. 12.538C–539D; for Alexander's tent, see especially Spawforth, A.J., ‘The court of Alexander the Great between Europe and Asia’, in id. (ed.), The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies (Cambridge, 2007), 82–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 94–7, 109, 112–20.

31 As Nenci (n. 10), 181 on 5.20 observes, Alexander's crude killing of the ambassadors puts them on a par with the Athenians and the Spartans; it is striking, by comparison, that there is no tradition of any subsequent punishment. For Hdt. 7.133–7, see esp. Irwin, E., ‘The significance of Talthybius’ wrath’, in Geus, K., Irwin, E. and Poiss, T. (edd.), Wege des Erzählens. Logos und Topos bei Herodot (Frankfurt am Main, 2013), 223–60Google Scholar. Oral ‘deformation’: Murray, O., ‘Herodotus and oral history’, in Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. and Kuhrt, A. (edd.), Achaemenid History II. The Greek Sources (Leiden, 1987), 93–115Google Scholar.

32 Hammond, N.G.L. and Griffith, G.T., A History of Macedonia. Volume II 550–336 B.C. (Oxford, 1979), 98–9Google Scholar, a position answered by Scaife (n. 8), 129–30. Fearn (n. 1), 99 posits an over-stark choice between Macedonian propaganda and Herodotean invention.

33 Martin, V., ‘La politique des Achéménides. L'exploration prelude de la conquête’, MH 22 (1965), 28–38Google Scholar.

34 In a Greek context, see especially Haubold, J., ‘Xerxes’ Homer’, in Bridges, E., Hall, E. and Rhodes, P.J. (edd.), Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars. Antiquity to the Third Millennium (Oxford, 2007), 47–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 What evidence there is suggests that, even if non-Persians could be integrated into the court hierarchy (Briant [n. 10], 349–50), and despite the example of Metiochus’ marriage to an unspecified Persian wife and the naturalization of his children (Hdt. 6.41), the products of such inter-ethnic marriages may have formed an outer group in the Persian elite. Amyntes, son of Boubares and Gygaie, was seemingly ‘not recognized as a Persian’ (Briant [n. 10], 350), and it is perhaps significant that Pausanias’ proposal ‘to marry [the king's] daughter and make Sparta and the rest of Hellas subject to [him]’ (θυγατέρα τε τὴν σὴν γῆμαι καί σοι Σπάρτην τε καὶ τὴν ἄλλην Ἑλλάδα ὑποχείριον ποιῆσαι, Thuc. 1.128.7) was not realized. Cf. Brosius (n. 24), 192 for marriage to non-Persians as permissible in exceptional cases, 69, at nn. 80–2 for speculation on a shift to an endogamous marriage policy with Cyrus II and Cassandane.

36 See here Badian (n. 10), 115–16.

37 Cf. Brosius (n. 24), 77–9. Briant (n. 10), 337 speculates that there may have been a double wedding with formalization of earlier marriages at the vernal equinox, as at Strabo 15.3.17.

38 The magnificent tent of a hundred couches constructed at Dium before the launch of Alexander's expedition might suggest a level of continuity from previous Macedonian practice, Diod. Sic. 17.16.4 (with Borza, E.N., ‘The symposium at Alexander's court’, Ancient Macedonia III [Thessaloniki, 1983], 45–55Google Scholar, at 46–7). Alternatively, however, Macedonian royal practice had, here as elsewhere, already been influenced by Persian: cf. Spawforth (n. 30), 92; Brosius, M., ‘Why Persia became the enemy of Macedon’, in Henkelman, W. and Kuhrt, A. (edd.), Achaemenid History XIII. A Persian Perspective. Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg (Leiden, 2003), 227–37Google Scholar; more broadly Kienast, D., Philipp II von Makedonien und das Reich der Achaimeniden (Munich, 1973)Google Scholar. (A reputation for banquets is perhaps reflected in Bacchylides’ ode for Alexander I, fr. 20b, where he describes his own song as ‘an adornment for banquets at month's end’, συμπον[ίαι]σιν ἄγαλμ’ [ἐν] εἰκάδεν[σιν.) There is no hint in the account of the Dium banquet of a hierarchical seating plan, however: only that the guests consisted of ‘friends, commanders and ambassadors from the cities’. For the institution of the Persian king's dinner, see especially Lewis, D., ‘The king's dinner (Polyaenus, IV.3.32)’, in Kuhrt, A. and Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. (edd.), Achaemenid History II. The Greek Sources (Leiden, 1987), 79–87Google Scholar; Briant, P., ‘Table du roi, tribute et redistribution chez les Achéménides’, in Briant, P. and Herrenschmidt, C. (edd.), Le Tribut dans l'empire Perse (Paris, 1989), 35–44Google Scholar; Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H., ‘Persian food: stereotypes and political identity’, in Wilkins, J., Harvey, D. and Dobson, M. (edd.), Food in Antiquity (Exeter, 1995), 286–302Google Scholar, at 292–6; Henkelman, W., ‘“Consumed before the king”. The table of Darius, that of Irdabama and Irtaštuna, and that of his satrap Karkiš’, in Jacobs, B. and Rollinger, R. (edd.), Der Achämenidenhof (Wiesbaden, 2010), 667–775Google Scholar.

39 ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις τῶν ἄλλων ἐθνῶν ὅσοι κατ’ ἀξίωσιν ἤ τινα ἄλλην ἀρετὴν πρεσβευόμενοι. An alternative interpretation of the seating plan was proposed by Tarn, W.W., Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1948), 2.442Google Scholar, and was refuted by Badian, E., ‘Alexander the Great and the unity of mankind’, Historia 7 (1958), 425–44Google Scholar. The Persian background to the Opis banquet is noted by Briant (n. 10), 311; Spawforth (n. 30), 103; Harrison, T., ‘Oliver Stone, Alexander, and the unity of mankind’, in Cartledge, P. and Greenland, F. Rose (edd.), Responses to Oliver Stone's Alexander. Film, History, and Cultural Studies (Madison, WI, 2009), 219–42Google Scholar, at 226–8. For the debate on Alexander's Persian debts, see e.g. Fox, R. Lane, ‘Alexander the Great: “Last of the Achaemenids”?’, in Tuplin, C.J. (ed.), Persian Responses: Political and Cultural Interaction with(in) the Achaemenid Empire (Swansea, 2007), 267–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiemer, H.-U., ‘Alexander – der letzte Achaimenide? Eroberungspolitik, locale Eliten, und altorientalische Traditionen im Jahr 323’, Historische Zeitschrift 284 (2007), 281–309Google Scholar.

40 Diod. Sic. 19.22 with Roisman, J., Alexander's Veterans and the Early Wars of the Successors (Austin, TX, 2012), 206–7Google Scholar; Peucestas’ banquet included four concentric circles of guests, but with the seating pattern focussed less directly on ethnicity than on seniority.

41 νομίζοντες ἑωυτοὺς εἶναι ἀνθρώπων μακρῷ τὰ πάντα ἀρίστους. This hierarchy of virtue also has its corollary for Herodotus in the earlier Median system of government, a kind of relay system, in which the Medes ruled their neighbours, they in turn ruled their neighbours, and so on.

42 Cf. Plut. Artax. 5.3 for the placement of the king's mother and wife (‘the wife sitting below him, the mother above him’).

43 See here Root, M.C., King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art (Leiden, 1979), 234, 276–7Google Scholar; Root herself suggests that the figures are either ‘alternating Median and Persian clansmen or, rather [the interpretation she prefers], alternating military and courtly aspects of the Iranian nobility’. The emphasis on distinct ethnic groups more broadly in the Apadana reliefs suggests to me that the former reading is preferable.

44 Tarn, W.W., ‘Alexander the Great and the unity of mankind’, PBA 19 (1933), 123–66Google Scholar, answered by e.g. Badian (n. 39); in similar vein, Robinson, C.A., ‘The extraordinary ideas of Alexander the Great’, American Historical Review 62 (1957), 326–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 So, for example, the same balance is arguably achieved through the image of the king held aloft on a throne platform by the peoples of the empire, for which see Root (n. 43), 131–61.

46 Bowie (n. 17), 107.

47 This need not exclude the possibility of other influences on Alexander's concept of homonoia, e.g. from Theophrastus (whether these influences were prior to or subsequent to Alexander's actions): see Thomas, C.G., ‘Alexander the Great and the unity of mankind’, CJ 63 (1968), 258–60Google Scholar.

My thanks to Jon Hesk and Myles Lavan for their guidance, and to the anonymous reader for CQ for their comments.