herodotus

men, that it may not be our ruin, but endure to see that which isbeing done: as to my departure, however, in that I will do as thousayest." 20. When Amyntas after having made of him this request haddeparted, Alexander said to the Persians: "With these women ye haveperfect freedom, guests, to have commerce with all, if ye so desire,or with as many of them as ye will. About this matter ye shall be theywho give the word; but now, since already the hour is approaching foryou to go to bed and I see that ye have well drunk, let these women goaway, if so it is pleasing to you, to bathe themselves; and when theyhave bathed, then receive them back into your company." Having sosaid, since the Persians readily agreed, he dismissed the women, whenthey had gone out, to the women's chambers; and Alexander himselfequipped men equal in number to the women and smooth-faced, in thedress of the women, and giving them daggers he led them into thebanqueting-room; and as he led them in, he said thus to the Persians:"Persians, it seems to me that ye have been entertained with a feastto which nothing was wanting; for other things, as many as we had, andmoreover such as we were able to find out and furnish, are allsupplied to you, and there is this especially besides, which is thechief thing of all, that is, we give you freely in addition ourmothers and our sisters, in order that ye may perceive fully that yeare honoured by us with that treatment which ye deserve, and also inorder that ye may report to the king who sent you that a man ofHellas, ruler under him of the Macedonians, entertained you well atboard and bed." Having thus said Alexander caused a Macedonian man inthe guise of a woman to sit by each Persian, and they, when thePersians attempted to lay hands on them, slew them. 21. So theseperished by this fate, both they themselves and their company ofservants; for there came with them carriages and servants and all theusual pomp of equipage, and this was all made away with at the sametime as they. Afterwards in no long time a great search was made bythe Persians for these men, and Alexander stopped them with cunning bygiving large sums of money and his own sister, whose name was Gygaia;--by giving, I say, these things to Bubares a Persian, commander ofthose who were searching for the men who had been killed, Alexanderstopped their search. 22. Thus the death of these Persians was keptconcealed. And that these descendants of Perdiccas are Hellenes, asthey themselves say, I happen to know myself, and not only so, but Iwill prove in the succeeding history that they are Hellenes.[10]Moreover the Hellanodicai, who manage the games at Olympia, decidedthat they were so: for when Alexander wished to contend in the gamesand had descended for this purpose into the arena, the Hellenes whowere to run against him tried to exclude him, saying that the contestwas not for Barbarians to contend in but for Hellenes: since howeverAlexander proved that he was of Argos, he was judged to be a Hellene,and when he entered the contest of the foot-race his lot came out with