Note 35 — Chapter LVI · THE END OF ALEXANDER

Droysend rejects these reports with the utmost contempt; perhaps forgetting what Herodotus (IX, 24) relates of the mourning for Masistius, in which the Persians shaved themselves, and the horses, and the beasts of burden: a precedent, which at least proves that there is nothing absurd or incredible in Plutarch’s account; if it does not render it certain that the same marks of grief were a necessary part of the general mourning ordered by Alexander.