This seminar has rightly laid stress on the independence of oriental evidence and on the importance of freeing its interpretation from presuppositions based on Greek evidence. I must admit that much of my recent thinking has also gone in the other direction. Taking my start from what seemed to me to be the fact that Greeks were widely employed by Persians in a secretarial capacity, I have argued in general terms that Herodotus could have had good evidence for his more documentary material and, more specifically, that there is reason to believe that Xerxes' army–list contains sound prosopographical information. Despite the sweeping condemnation which fourth–century Greek writing about Persia has sometimes received, I think that there is some evidence to suggest that factual investigation of Persian institutions continued. I propose to discuss here the most substantial piece of evidence. Surprisingly, since it is preserved in medieval manuscripts, it has had virtually no discussion at all; if it had been a new discovery on papyrus, it would have had a lengthy bibliography.

Polyaenus, IV.3.32, gives us a list of commodities prepared for the King's dinner and supper read by Alexander in the Persian palace, written on a bronze pillar, where there are the other laws which Cyrus wrote. Three Teubner pages of straight document are then followed by a short anecdote, recounting how the other Macedonians regarded the list as a sign of the King's eudaimonia and Alexander treated it with contempt. The sources of Polyaenus are not always straightforward. As one might expect, the Alexander anecdotes show some affinity with the vulgate tradition about him, and an ultimate origin for them in Cleitarchus is at least a possibility.