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.
 Herodotus then (to return to him) thought the Olympic festival a suitable shop-window for showing the Greeks such a wonderful historian of the Greek victories as himself. As for me—and in the name of the God of Friendship do not think me mad or that I am comparing my works to his, bless him—I declare that my case and his are alike. When I first came to live in Macedonia, I wondered what should be policy. My dearest wish was to become known to you all and to show off my works to as many in Macedonia as I could; but to go round visiting each city in person at that time of the year seemed an arduous undertaking, whereas I thought that if I took the occasion of this present festival of your nation and made my appearance and gave my lecture then, my prayers must surely be answered.
 Here you are then gathered together, the cream of every city, the very epitome of all Macedonia, in the country’s finest city, so different, thank goodness,



 

from Pisa with its lack of space, its tents and huts, its stifling heat; nor is my audience a vulgar mob more keen on seeing athletics, most of them thinking Herodotus of secondary importance. No, there are the finest orators, historians, and rhetoricians—no small matter indeed that my arena should not seem far inferior to Olympia. Compare me with Polydamas, Glaucus, and Milo, and I know that you will judge me imprudent. But remember them less and strip me and look at me as I am, and then perhaps you will not find me altogether deserving of the whip. My arena being what it is, I should not find even this judgment unsatisfactory.