The Histories · 5.20

When Amyntas after having made of him this request had departed, Alexander said to the Persians: "With these women ye have perfect 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 they who give the word; but now, since already the hour is approaching for you to go to bed and I see that ye have well drunk, let these women go away, if so it is pleasing to you, to bathe themselves; and when they have bathed, then receive them back into your company." Having so said, since the Persians readily agreed, he dismissed the women, when they had gone out, to the women's chambers; and Alexander himself equipped men equal in number to the women and smooth-faced, in the dress of the women, and giving them daggers he led them into the banqueting-room; and as he led them in, he said thus to the Persians: "Persians, it seems…

Herodotus of Halicarnassus · trans. G. C. Macaulay, 1890
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