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.