138 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



His ruin. A victim he was destined to be, although not in the way in which 



he appears to have expected. A practice had been introduced by 

 Philip, similar to that which prevailed in the courts of the feudal 

 sovereigns in the Middle Ages, that the sons of the principal nobles 

 should be brought up at court in attendance on the person of the 

 Conspiracy king. Of these pages, esquires, or grooms of the bedchamber (for 

 of the pages. ^^ Q f^ ce a pp ears to have included all these duties 1 ), who attended 

 Hermolaus a O n Alexander, there was one named Hermolaus, a youth of high 

 Caiiisthenes. spirit and generous disposition, who was much attached to Callisthenes, 

 and took great pleasure in his society and conversation. The phi- 

 losopher appears to have considered his mind as a fit depository for 

 the manly principles of Grecian liberty, which the tenets of Anax- 

 archus and the corrupt example of the monarch threatened utterly to 

 extinguish, and, in the inculcation of these, to have made use of lan- 

 guage and of illustrations, which, considering the circumstances of 

 the case, were certainly dangerous, although in reference to the then 

 prevailing tone of morality we shall scarcely be justified in censuring 

 them. Harmodius and Aristogiton having, with the sacrifice of 

 their own lives, been fortunate enough to bring about the freedom of 

 their country, had been canonized as political saints, and were held 

 up to all the youth of the free states of Greece for admiration and 

 imitation ; and Callisthenes can hardly deserve especial blame for 

 participating in this general idolatry, or for regarding the glory of a 

 tyrannicide as surpassing that of a tyrant, however brilliant the fortunes 

 of the latter might be. Neither can we at all wonder that he should 

 delight in depreciating the " pride, pomp, and circumstance" of great- 

 ness in comparison with dignity of character and manly energy, and 

 in exposing the impotence of externals to avert any of " the ills to 

 which flesh is heir." Such topics have been in all ages, and ever will 

 be, the staple both of philosophy and of the sciolism which is its 

 counterfeit; and the necessity for dwelling upon them must to Callis- 

 thenes have appeared the greater in order to counterbalance the habits 

 of feeling which Persian manners and sophistry like that of Anax- 

 archus were calculated to spread among the Macedonian youth. He 

 is said indeed to have continually professed that the only motive 

 which induced him to accompany Alexander into Asia was that he 

 might be the means of restoring his countrymen to their fatherland, 

 as true Greeks as they went out, uncorrupted by the manners or the 

 luxury of the barbarians; 2 and he seems unquestionably to have 

 succeeded in putting a stop, at least for a time, to the ceremony of 

 the salaam, of all eastern customs the most galling to Macedonian 

 pride. 3 In an evil day, however, to Callisthenes, it happened that 

 Hermolaus was out boar-hunting with Alexander, when the animal 



1 Arrian, iv. c. 23. 



2 Plutarch, Vit. sec. 53. 



3 Plutarch, Vit. sec. 54. Compare Arrian, iv. 14, where Hermolaus is said to 

 have complained of rV irpofficvvrjo-u/ r^v $ov\t]Q*'iffa.v /ecu ofara> 





