Alexander shaved clean, and set the fashion in this respect for the Graeco-Roman world for the next 500 years.
Philomelion was probably a Pergamenian foundation on the great Graeco-Roman highway from Ephesus to the east, and to its townsmen the Smyrniotes wrote the letter that describes the martyrdom of Polycarp. Cicero, on his way to Cilicia, dated some of his extant correspondence there; and the place played a considerable part in the frontier wars between the Byzantine emperors and the sultanate of Rum.
At a time when all nationalities, and at the same time all bonds of religion and national customs, were beginning to be broken up in the seeming cosmos and real chaos of the Graeco-Roman Empire, the Jews stood out like a rock in the midst of the ocean.
We can hardly doubt that the intention of the Graeco-Roman custom was similar.
In the centre of this gallery stand the four colossal bronze horses which belonged to some Graeco-Roman triumphal quadriga, and were brought to Venice by the Doge Enrico Dandolo after the fall of Constantinople in 1204; they were carried off by Napoleon to Paris in 1797, and restored by Francis of Austria in 1815.
