'Wine!' ordered Ptolemy.'Pour wine for everyone,

'Wine!' ordered Ptolemy.'Pour wine for everyone,' and then he clapped his hands and while the guests took up reclining positions on their dining beds, servants poured the wine from the crater and others began serving the food: partridge on skewer, thrush, mountain hens, duck and then a fine rarity – pheasant.
At his right hand Alexander asked for his dearest friend Hephaestion, to his left, Ptolemy, his host.
After the game came a quarter of veal – roasted and cut into pieces and served individually by the carver while the servants brought in baskets of fragant, freshly baked bread together with shelled walnuts and boiled ducks' eggs.
The flautists entered with their instruments and began to play. They were all beautiful and exotic women – Mysian, Carian, Thracian, Bythnian – and they all wore their hair tied up with coloured ribbons or bonnets fringed with silver and gold. They were dressed in imitation of the Amazon, with short tunics and bows and quivers over their shoulders, props used in the theatre.
After the first song some of them put down their bows and then, after the second song, their quivers and then took off their leggings and their tunics so that they were completely naked, their young bodies shining with perfumed oils under the light of the lamps. They began to dance to the sound of the flutes and the drums, floating in front of the tables and among the diner's beds.
The friends had all stopped eating, but they continued drinking and were now in a state of total excitement. Some of them stood up, took off their clothes and joined in the dance with the accelerating rhythm of the drums and the tambourines carrying them inexorably towards a climax.
Suddenly Ptolomy grabbed a girl by the hand, stopping her gyrations and manoeuvring her so that Alexander could get a good look.
She's the most beautiful of the lot,' he said. 'I've grabbed her for you.'
'And for me? Asked Hepshastion
'Do you like this one?' Alexander asked as he stopped another striking girl, this one with red hair.
Ptolemy had given orders to the servants to fill the lamps in such a way that some of them would have run out of oil before others, leaving the room in a sort of half shadow.
The youngsters fondled one another as they lay on the dining beds, and on the rugs and the skins that covered part of the paved floor. Meanwhile the music of the flautist continued to ring against the frescoed walls, almost giving rhythm to their excited panting and the surging of ther gleaming bodies in the glow of the few lamps that were still burning in the corners of the great room.

From the book: Alexander: Child of A Dream. By Valerio Massino Manfredi. Translated by Iain Halliday