140 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



enemies to raise a strong suspicion against him. 1 They alleged, that 

 to a question from Herrnolaus, " How a man might make himself 

 the most illustrious of his species?" he replied, " By slaying him 

 that is most illustrious ;" and that to incite the youth to the rash act 

 he bade him " not be in awe c of the couch of gold, but remember 

 that such a one often holds a sick or a wounded man ;" also, that 

 when Philotas had asked him whom the Athenians honoured most of 

 all men, he replied, '* Harmodius and Aristogiton, the tyrannicides ;" 

 and when the querist expressed a doubt whether such a person would 

 at the existing time find countenance and protection anywhere in 

 Greece, he replied, " That if every other city shut its gates against 

 him, he would certainly find a refuge in Athens ;" and in support of this 

 opinion quoted the instance of the Heraclidse who there found protec- 

 tion against the tyrant Enrystheus. 2 It requires but little penetration 

 to see how, under circumstances of such peculiar irritation, the words 

 of Callisthenes might, with very little violence and with the greatest 

 plausibility, be interpreted in a treasonable sense, although they were 

 nothing more than Macedonian principles expressed in a strong and 

 antithetical manner. Indeed, the very admixture of legendary history 

 in the instance of the sons of Hercules seems to betray the common- 

 places of the rhetorician. And that this account of the matter, to 

 which Arrian, following the majority of contemporary accounts, 

 inclines, is the true one, seems proved beyond all doubt by two letters 

 of Alexander himself, which are cited by Plutarch. In the former of 

 these, written immediately after the event to his general, Craterus, he 

 states, " that the pages on being put to the torture confessed their 

 own treason, but denied that any one else was privy to the attempt." 

 He wrote to Attains and Alcetas to the same effect. But afterwards 

 in a letter to Antipater, he says, " the pages have been stoned to 

 Inculpation death by the Macedonians ; but as for the sophist, I intend to punish 

 of Amtotle. j^^ an( j fa ose too W } 1O sen ^ h[ m ou ^ an( j a } so the cities which harbour 



conspirators against me." In the latter part of this phrase, according 

 to Plutarch, he alludes to Aristotle, as being the great-uncle of Callis- 

 thenes, and him by whose advice he had joined the court. It seems plain 

 that in the interval between the writing of these letters, Alexander's 

 mind had been worked upon by those whose interest it was to identify 

 the cause of manliness and virtue with that of disloyalty and treason, 

 by Anaxarchus and the crew of court sycophants whose practice he 

 sanctioned by his example, and attempted to justify by his philosophy. 

 The tide of hatred, however, was setting too strong against Callisthenes 

 for him to stem it. He was placed under confinement, and according 

 to accounts, which there is too much reason to fear are true, cruelly 

 mutilated. It is said to have been Alexander's intention to bring 



1 Arrian, loc. cit. 



8 Plutarch, Vit. sec. 55 ; Arrian, iv. 10. This Philotas is not the son of Par- 

 menio, put to death, together with his father, on a former occasion, but a page, the 

 son of Cards, a Thracian. See Arrian, iv. 13. 



