AEISTOTLE. 139 



charged directly towards the king. The page, influenced probably 

 more by the ardour of the chase, and his own youthful spirits, than 

 by any just apprehension for his sovereign's safety, struck the creature 

 a mortal wound before it came up to him. Alexander, the keenest of 

 huntsmen, balked of his expected sport, in the passion of the moment, 

 ordered Hermolaus to be flogged in the presence of his brother pages, insulted by 

 and deprived him of his horse (apparently the sign of summarily A1 exander. 

 degrading him from his employment). Such an insult to a Greek 

 could only be washed out in the blood of the aggressor, and Her- 

 molaus found ready sympathy among his compeers. It was agreed 

 among them to assassinate Alexander while asleep, and the execution Plots his 

 of the design was fixed for a night on which Antipater, the son of death- 

 Asclepiodorus (whom Alexander had made lord-lieutenant of Syria), 

 was to be the groom in waiting. It so happened that on that night 

 Alexander did not retire to bed at all, but sat at table carousing until 

 the very morning; whether by accident, or in consequence of the 

 advice of a Syrian female, to whom in the character of a soothsayer 

 he paid great respect, is not agreed by the contemporary historians. 

 But this circumstance, whatever was the cause of it, saved the king 

 and led to the detection of the plot. The next day, Epimenes, one 

 of the conspirators, mentioned the matter to an individual who was 

 strongly attached to him. This person spoke of it to Eurylochus, 

 the brother of Epimenes, perhaps considering that his relationship 

 was a sufficient guarantee for secrecy. Eurylochus, however, at once 

 laid an information before Ptolemy Lagides, subsequently the first of 

 the Greek dynasty in Egypt, and then one of the guard of honour in 

 attendance on Alexander. He reported to the king the names of is detected, 

 those who he had been told were concerned in the affair : they were 

 arrested, and on being put to the torture confessed their crime and 

 gave up the names of others who were participators. 1 So far all 

 accounts agree as to the substantial facts of this story, but here a great 

 discrepancy commences. Ptolemy and Aristobulus 2 both asserted inculpation 

 that the pages named Callisthenes as the instigator of their design. J^SS 1 *" 

 This, however, was denied^ by the majority of contemporary writers 

 on the subject, who related that the ill-will towards Callisthenes pre- 

 viously existing in the mind of Alexander, united with the intimacy 

 between Hermolaus and the former, furnished ample means to his 



1 Arrian, iv. 13, 14. 



2 Aristobulus was one of Alexander's generals, and wrote an account of his cam- 

 paigns. He did not, however, commence this work till his eighty-fourth year 

 (Lucian, De Macrob.), long enough, therefore, after the transaction in question, to 

 allow us to suppose that by a slip of the memory he may have confused circum- 

 stantial with direct evidence. Moreover, as there was nothing which made Alex- 

 ander so unpopular as the execution of Callisthenes (Quintus Curtius, De rebus 

 gestis Alex. viii. c. 3), so there was nothing which his biographers took so much 

 pains to extenuate. See Ste. Croix, p. 360, et seq. ; Arrian (iv. 14,/n.), at the 

 same time that he speaks of the opportunities of knowledge possessed by Ptolemy 

 and Aristobulus, and of their general fidelity, yet remarks that their accounts of the 

 details of this affair differ from one another. 



