There were garments of all kinds for trade among the merchants and thieves who followed Alexander through Asia. Bearing a simple chiton of Ionic type, made of good linen, I arrived at Rohjane’s tent and asked to be admitted. Inside, I found her with Youtab, the sole handmaid permitted to follow her in her new life. The two women were sitting around a small fire, turning a wild piglet on a spit. Rohjane had a hunting knife on her hip. She had apparently used this to cut an impromptu smoke-hole in the roof.
“Machon! You are just in time to eat with us-”
I explained that my purpose had to do with gentler arts than the roasting of meat.
“That is your loss,” said Youtab as she extracted one of the boar’s eyes with her knife and offered it to the Queen.
“You have Greek clothes…” Rohjane said to me with her mouth full of eyeball. “…I have those too…”
She rose and threw open a cedar chest. Inside was a large woolen garment. Inspecting it, I saw it was a peplos of Doric cut, with no armholes or neckhole. The dress was meant to be fastened at the shoulder with fibulae.
“This won’t do,” I told her.
“The wool is good. It was bought in Sardis.”
“Dresses like this have been out of favor in Athens for many years.”
“I like the hardware,” she said, showing me a pair of long, sharp pins that might have served as daggers.
As this was a good opportunity to begin her education in Greek history, I told her the myth of why Athenian women were forbidden to wear dresses of Doric style. Once, in the city’s distant past, the army had been humiliated by the Aeginetans in battle. A single soldier returned home to report the disaster. The women of Athens, outraged by the loss of their husbands, pulled the stickpins from their dresses and flayed the messenger on the spot. Needless to say, the elders of the city were disturbed by this incident. From that day Athenian women were forbidden to fasten their dresses with pins. Or so says Herodotus.
“The Athenian men would have done better to win their battles, than to tell their women what to wear!” Rohjane cried.
It took much coaxing to get her to try the dress I brought for her. As she went behind a screen to change, I found myself awkwardly confronted by Youtab, who was as delicate as a Bactrian camel and possibly less attractive.
“Wanna go?” she asked me. Then she held up the two long fingers of her left hand, with knuckles pressed together and slightly flexed. In the moment, I had no idea what this signified. She laughed at me.
“Oh, don’t play the fool! I’ve heard all about you Greeks and your pleasures…” she said, inclining her head toward her mistress. “But she also tells me you never use your mouths down there on a woman. Is that true?”
If what she meant by “down there” was what I thought she meant, then I told her that the very thought would revolt any man.
“Don’t be so sure. The Persians make quite a practice of it.”
“That explains their performance on the battlefield,” I replied. Yet Youtab’s impertinence made me wonder about something else. Greek soldiers had a name for the Persians-“carpet-munchers”-that I had thought referred to their habit of bowing their heads at the feet of their masters. Perhaps, I thought, it referred to their bedroom perversities instead.
Rohjane came out with her head and arms in the right places, but with no sense of how to gather the chiton in the right places to make it drape. I helped the Queen as best I could without touching her, leaving it to Youtab to tie and retie the girdle around her hips. The result was very pleasing. It took some effort not to stare at the sheerness of the fabric, which clung in ways that would have given Praxiteles much to ponder.
“Not bad, but I can improve it. Youtab, my knife!”
Before I could utter a word, Rohjane cut the dress open to make a rude opening for her breasts to show through. She then covered them with a small square of silk, tied in Sogdian fashion at the neck.
“Better, no?” she asked me.
In most respects this was the kind of problem I faced. Asia now had a barbarian queen with a weaker sense of decorum than a young girl. Not only did she feel herself entitled to appear at drinking parties, speak her mind, and show her body as readily as any man, but she assumed that any other arrangement was inconceivable. To correct her was nothing less than a Sisyphisean task. No sooner had I convinced her that the casual display of her breasts was shameful, than she took to walking around with her chiton hiked up to her thighs. When I got her legs covered, down came her hair. Not even the finest of golden fillets would convince her to restrain that wild coif. Faced with whatever other little rebellions she could conceive, I decided to grant her that impropriety.
Where was Alexander in all this? At best, he was absent; at worst, drunk. As the weeks passed the novelty of his new bride wore off. By the end he spent no more than one night in five in her bed. Bagoas, on the other hand, was either a fixed presence around the King, or always in the vicinity to come running. When Alexander left to do the duty of a husband the eunuch would jeer or groan. In this I believe he was encouraged by Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Craterus, who had little interest in the production of a legitimate heir. If Youtab’s testimony is any guide, they had little grounds for fear in this regard.
Along with the unconstraint Rohjane displayed about her person went other strange habits. The Sogdians, like many people of Asia, had a particular dread of women at the time of their monthly flow. The Zoroastrian custom was not only complete separation of the “unclean” female from her family, but separation from all aspects of the seven creations. Their handling of food, drink, water, animals and fire were forbidden. Since ordinary clothes were ruined by contact with the woman’s body, she was required to wear special garments reserved for that time. For a menstruating woman even to breathe on another person was an assault that demanded vigorous ablutions. The same applied to her gaze, which was reputed to have the power to stifle the generative power of men. Many of the humble women of Asia therefore spend their days of corruption in small, dark, stifling hovels where their opportunities to pollute the cosmos-and therefore to aid the Hostile Spirit-are restricted.
Now I am aware that certain Greeks have queer beliefs about these matters. In Ionia, the influence of menstruating women is thought to be noxious enough to kill agricultural pests. Wives and daughters are sent in their vulnerable times to walk the fields, their dresses above their waists, to control beetles and worms. Even in Attica it is thought that the inception of flow at a time of lunar eclipse is bad luck. I have heard doctors debate over the dangers of sharing bathwater with women, menstruating or not. But even these beliefs are a far cry from utter segregation from the course of life, as is the custom in much of Asia.
A hovel would not do for a queen in her indisposition. Rohjane refused to spend those times in her usual tent either, claiming that it had too many corners.
“And what is wrong with corners?” I asked.
“Corners, O ignorant one, are places where the evil influences released by the menses may hide.”
Rohjane therefore required a special round tent be prepared for her use. She also could not touch the earth with her bare feet, or use utensils to eat. If she happened to touch any metal tools Youtab took them outside and washed them first with cow urine, then sand, then water. It was essential to observe the correct order of ablutions, or else some deity or another would be weakened in the struggle against the daevas…
“The defendant is warned again to confine his remarks to topics relevant to his defense,” Polycleitus interjected.