A little later he appeared before his astonished Macedonian officers clad in what pleased him of the costume of the Persians. The tiara and the sleeved jacket and the baggy trousers he did not adopt, but he took their soft undergarments, and, as the symbol of authority, the diadem. He also remodeled his court in the Oriental fashion, adding purple to the uniform of the guards, chamberlains, and, if a dubious report is to be trusted, a harem. Finally in 327 B.C., shortly after his romantic marriage with Roxane, a Persian princess of the Sogdian nobility, he added the requirement that all who were admitted to his presence should kneel at his feet and kiss the dust before him. "Chares of Mytilene,"[67] who was master of ceremonies when this custom was inaugurated, "says that Alexander, while drinking at a symposium, offered his goblet to one of his comrades, who, taking it, rose and went to the hearth, where, quaffing it off, he first knelt and kissed Alexander's feet, then kissed his cheek and returned to his couch. All present did the same except Callisthenes," who proffered the kiss on the cheek without first kneeling and thus earned the disfavor of the king. With this rather lame conclusion was enacted the prologue of what his old Macedonian nobles regarded as a great tragedy. "It has been thought," says Eduard Meyer,[68] "that _proskynesis_"--to use the technical term for this ceremony--"was only the natural expression of the fact that by the arbitrament of battle Alexander had become lord of the Persian empire and legitimate successor of Darius. And, indeed, there is truth in this idea. But the meaning of the requirement, and the historical significance of the occurrence and of the conflict which it occasioned, are by no means exhausted when proskynesis is regarded as a harmless concession to the views of his Oriental subjects. The essential point is that Alexander demanded it of the Macedonians and Greeks also. It is precisely in this matter, however, that the views of Orientals and Europeans collide most squarely and typically. Herein exists an antagonism which is independent altogether of race and nationality. We cannot say how it arose, but it dominates the whole course of the cultural and political development of the regions in question. The Oriental, be he a Semite, an Egyptian, an Indo-European, a Chinaman, or of any other stock, finds it natural that in intercourse with others he has to humble himself; that he call himself their servant, them his masters; that he kneel in the dust, not only before the king, but before all superiors, without lessening thereby the sense of personal pride with which he, too, may be animated.