[1] Alexander gave a feast after his return from India of five
days' continuance, when ninety marriages were celebrated
and nine thousand guests assembled. Diodorus Siculus
describes the festivities with which Antisthenes, a rich
citizen of Agrigentum (B.C. 414), celebrated the marriage
of his daughter: all the citizens of Agrigentum were
entertained at his expense on tables laid for them at their
own doors, beside a great number of strangers. The
festivities, as in the parable of the Ten Virgins, took
place in the evening, and the whole city was one blaze of
light. The Roman and Egyptian banquets were proverbial for
their costliness and splendour. In Persia still, royal
banquets are prolonged for many weeks; and a Chinese
emperor used frequently to make a feast that lasted a
hundred and twenty days.--_Thodey._
[2] _Old_ wines are intended by "wines well refined;" they have
stood long on the lees, have drawn out all the virtue from
them, and have been cleared of all the coarser material. In
the East, wine will be improved by keeping even more than
the wines of the West! and even so the mercies of God are
the sweeter to our meditations because of their antiquity.
From old eternity, or ever the earth was, the covenant
engagements of everlasting love have been resting like
wines on the lees, and to-day they bring to us the utmost
riches of all the attributes of God.--_Spurgeon._