Herodotus or Aëtion (5-6)

You may well wonder at the quality of his work that induced a chief judge of the games to give his daughter in marriage to a stranger like Aëtion. The picture is actually in Italy; I have seen it myself and can describe it to you. The scene is a very beautiful chamber, and in it there is a bridal couch with Roxana, a very lovely maiden, sitting upon it, her eyes cast down in modesty, for Alexander is standing there. There are smiling Cupids: one is standing behind her removing the veil from her head and showing Roxana to her husband; another like a true servant is taking the sandal off her foot, already preparing her for bed; a third Cupid has hold of Alexander’s cloak and is pulling him with all his might towards Roxana. The king himself is holding out a garland to the maiden and their best man and helper, Hephaestion, is there with a blazing torch in his hand, leaning on a very handsome youth—I think he is Hymenaeus [*] (his name is not inscribed). On the other side of the picture are more Cupids playing among Alexander’s armour; [*] two of them are carrying his spear, pretending to be labourers burdened under a beam; two others are dragging a third, their king no doubt, on the shield, holding it by the handgrips; another has gone inside the corslet, which is lying breast-up on the ground—he seems to

All this is not needless triviality and a waste of labour. Aëtion is calling attention to Alexander’s other love—War—, implying that in his love of Roxana he did not forget his armour. A further point about the picture itself is that it had a real matrimonial significance of quite a different sort—it courted Proxenides’ daughter for Aëtion! So as a by-product of his Alexander’s Wedding he came away with a wife himself and the King for best-man. His reward for his marriage of the imagination was a real-life marriage of his own.