Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/225

 ALEXANDER. 217 he not only treated them kindly, but also paid a ransom for his horse to those who took him. From hence he marched into Parthia, where not hav- ing much to do, he first put on the barbaric dress, perhaps with the view of making the work of civ- ilizing them the easier, as nothing gains more upon men than a conformity to their fashions and customs. Or it may have been as a first trial, whether the Macedo- nians might be brought to adore him, as the Persians did their kings, by accustoming them by little and little to bear with the alteration of his rule and course of life in other things. However, he followed not the Median fash- ion, which was altogether foreign and uncouth, and adopt- ed neither the trousers nor the sleeved vest, nor the tiara for the head, but taking a middle way between the Persian mode and the Macedonian,* so contrived his habit that it was not so flaunting as the one, and yet more pompous and magnificent than the other. At first he wore this habit only when he conversed with the barba- rians, or within doors, among his intimate friends and companions, but afterwards he appeared in it abroad, when he rode out, and at public audiences, a sight which the Macedonians beheld with grief; but they so respected his other virtues and good qualities, that they felt it reasonable in some things to gratify his fancies and his passion of glory, in pursuit of which he hazarded him- self so far, that, besides his other adventures, he had but lately been wounded in the leg by an arrow, which had so shattered the shank-bone that splinters were taken out. And on another occasion he received a violent blow with a stone upon the nape of the neck, which dimmed his sight for a good while afterwards. And yet all this could not hinder him from exposing himself freely to the Median dress being the more plainer.
 * Another reading is Median ; sumptuous, and the Persian the