Alexander and his friends were probably the best-dressed men of all the Greeks at any period. Of one of these friends, Agnon, it is said he wore gold nails in both his slippers and sandals,—a piece of pride which was like that of the English farmer during the late war, who went to a market-dinner in a coat garnished with gold buttons. The vanity of the farmer was wounded at finding that they attracted no notice; and he clumsily tried to feed his pride and win observation by remarking, that “it certainly weer very warm work to wear goold buttons in the dog-days!”
Alexander of course slept on a couch of gold. Great Ammon’s son deserved no less a bed; but I can hardly credit the assertion that the sovereign’s tent contained a hundred such beds, and that the tent itself was supported by fifty columns of gold. The beds however may not have been for one individual’s use, and the tent was as vast as a barracks: the couches may therefore have been for the general officers. Five hundred Persians kept guard therein. These were the Melophores, the “apple-bearers,” who carried a golden apple on the points of their lances, and who were the admiration of all the maid-servants of the district, attired as the Melophores were in uniforms of purple and yellow. These were surpassed by the thousand archers, in their mantles of flame-colour, violet, or celestial blue. These were irresistible; the ladies at least said so, if the enemy did not; but even they achieved fewer conquests (I allude less to the field than the bower) than the five hundred Macedonian Argyraspides, the corps of “silver bucklers,” behind whose shields however beat hearts more easily reached by the feathered shafts of Dan Cupido than by the javelins of the foe.
The purple-robed guard of Alexander was his chosen troop, his cent-garde, charged with watching over his personal safety, and seeing that he got safely to bed when his divinity was exceedingly drunk. They were terrible coxcombs, were these guards, and would condescend to the folly of flinging eggs at the passers-by, as though they knew no better than military gentlemen returning from Epsom, or a wrathful curate of the district of St. Barnabas pelting an anti-puseyite. These men cared little whether Alexander were a god or not, but they had a firmly fixed idea that their tailor had a family claim upon Olympus.
But what were these to Alcisthenes the Sybarite, who has been immortalized by Aristotle? This rather fast individual had a coat of such magnificent material,—the coat worn by Prince Esterhazy, and which that magnate never put on without losing I really do not know how many hundred pounds’ worth of pearls and diamonds, was, in comparison, a coat for the Sybarite’s valet,—Alcisthenes had a habit, I say, of such richness, that, on the day of the festival of Juno, it was exposed on Mount Lacinium, to the veneration of the crowds who annually repaired thither from all parts of Italy. It became the most attractive feature of the festival; and the shrines were passed by, that the pilgrims might fall into ecstasy in presence of Alcisthenes’ coat. It subsequently fell into the hands of old Dionysius,—a Jew in his way, as we all know,—and he sold it for one hundred and twenty talents to the Carthaginians: it was the highest price ever realized for such a garment.
But it was not the only coat exalted, like the serpent of old, to win insane worship from imbecile idolators. Gibbon smiles with warrantable contempt upon the Roman priests who, behind the altar, were preparing miracles wherewith to astound the people. A deeper contempt attaches to the several priests who compelled two poor honest tailors, or weavers rather, to produce the duplicate coats, without a seam, each warranted to have been worn by the Great Victim ere He passed to Calvary, and before each of which, as the only one genuine, thousands, ay millions, have flung themselves down in speechless ecstasy.
There is the one Holy Coat at Treves, and the one Holy Coat at Moscow; and the priests at either place will tell you that there were never two. The Empress Helena discovered that of Treves, says the legend. A Shah of Persia made a present of the Moscow garment to the Czar. Its genuineness was warranted by a Russian archbishop, who declared that, in a church in Georgia, a golden box placed upon a column had long contained this coat, and that it was doubtless the seamless coat of our Lord. A Muscovite monk standing by clinched the lie, by adding, that when the soldiers cast lots for the possession of the coat, it fell to one who lived in Georgia, and that this was the identical garment. Really, when we think seriously of these things, we must not be too hard upon those who reverenced the coat of the Sybarite.
To return to Alexander: he was the despair of all men who, desirous of following the fashion as he gave it, lacked means to realize the desire. He was to his generals, what very rich Hussar colonels are to the younger and poorer officers; or what Count D’Orsay used to be to the counter-dandies of the Metropolis.
Ephippus lived in the time of Commodus; and in allusion to that Emperor, who used to dress himself as Hercules, and go out daily in his car with the hero’s club, like a gold-headed cane, between his legs, he says:—“Is it extraordinary that in our days Commodus does this, when Alexander, a pupil of Aristotle, did worse in the olden time?”
Certainly, in the article of dress, the son of Philip was as different from the simplicity of his father, as the Prince Regent from George III. Not only did he wear the lion’s skin, and call himself Hercules, but, in private intercourse with his friends, he put on the winged cap and the ankle-pinions of Mercury. If I may say so without profanity, I would remark, that if Prince Albert were to walk through Kensington Gardens attired like David, with a sling and a stone in his hand to fling at the first fat gentleman he might encounter, he would not be committing a more unseemly act than Alexander was doing when he decked himself out to look like Mercury.
But when this wretched madman, the Macedonian I mean, rode out in his chariot, and forgetful of his wry neck—for he had a wry neck, and limped to boot,—and despite his very red nose and his blood-shot eyes, dressed like Diana, the goddess of Chastity, a Persian purple robe about him, and over his naked shoulder a bow and a quiver,—he must have looked as ridiculous in the eyes of the beholders, as if the late Sir William Curtis, who was so solemnly ridiculous in kilts, had exhibited himself daily in front of the Mansion-house in the dress and attitude of the Magdalene of Correggio.