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[7] Each night these paraded about the couch of the king so that he might select the one with whom he would lie that night.1 Alexander, as a matter of fact, employed these customs rather sparingly and kept for the most part to his accustomed routine, not wishing to offend the Macedonians.

1 Curtius 3.3.24; 6.6.8; Justin 12.3.10. This retinue of concubines was part of the traditional ceremonial of the Persian court. Solomon had a similar establishment (1 Kings 4), including a harem (1 Kings 11.3). There were three hundred and sixty of them, according to Ctesias (Plut. Artaxerxes 27), but three hundred and sixty-five in the Alexander tradition (Curtius, loc. cit.). Modern scholars are not inclined to accept this statement as true, but Alexander's army notoriously did not travel light, and if he had placed his court under a Persian chamberlain, that official would doubtless have attempted to equip it in the proper fashion. Cp. the many anecdotes of Alexander's luxury in Athenaeus 12.537-540 (and of Dareius, Athenaeus 13.557b).

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