ARISTOTLE. 141 



him to a trial in the presence of Aristotle on his return to G reece ; but 

 the unfortunate man, after remaining in his deplorable situation for a 

 considerable time, died from the effects of ill-treatment. 



Whatever prejudices against his old master may have been raised in ineffective 

 the mind of Alexander on the score of Callisthenes, and whatever ill Jj* 1 ^ the 

 consequences might perhaps have followed if the conqueror had lived Alexander, 

 to revisit Europe, intoxicated with his military successes, and hardened 

 bv the influence of those flatterers who, after Callisthenes's death, 

 reigned supreme at court, it is explicitly stated by Plutarch, that while 

 he lived, his estrangement never led him to injure Aristotle in the 

 slightest degree. Mortification, therefore, at the degeneracy of his 

 pupil, and sorrow at the loss of an affection in which he doubtless took 

 both pride and pleasure, were the only evils which the latter during 

 his remaining days had to endure. But a few years after the death of Report 

 both, a story began to be circulated which at last grew into a form in ^J^ * 6 

 the highest degree detrimental to his character. It is impossible to death of 

 doubt that Alexander died from the fever of the country, caught im- both 

 mediately after indulgence in the most extravagant excesses. At the 

 time no suspicion to the contrary was entertained. 1 But some time 

 afterwards, the ambitious and intriguing Olympias, who had long in- 

 dulged a bitter hostility towards Antipater (a hostility which the suc- 

 cessful establishment of the latter in the government of Macedonia after 

 her son's death had inflamed into a fiendish hatred), seized the oppor- 

 tunity which Alexander's rapid illness afforded, to throw the suspicion 

 of poisoning him upon her enemy, whose younger son lolaus had been 

 his cupbearer. It was not till the sixth year after the fatal event that 

 this story was set on foot ; and it seems to have originated in nothing 

 but Olympias's desire of vengeance, which then first found a favour- 

 able vent. The bones of lolaus, who had died in the interim, were 

 torn from their grave, and a hundred Macedonians, selected from 

 among the most distinguished of Antipater's friends, barbarously 

 butchered. 2 The accusation of poisoning the king seems at first to at first vague; 

 have been vaguely set on foot, the only circumstantial part of the 

 story being the point necessary to justify Olympias's malignity, namely 

 that lolaus was the agent in administering the poison. But in afterwards 

 process of time the minutest details of the transaction were supplied. detaile d- 

 We give them in the last form which they assumed. The fears of 

 Antipater, it was said, arising from the growing irritation of Alex- 

 ander incessantly stimulated by Olympias, induced him, on hearing 

 that he was superseded by Craterus and ordered into Asia with new 

 levies, to plot against his master's life. A fit means for this purpose 

 was pointed out to him by his friend Aristotle, who dreaded the per- 

 sonal consequences to himself which seemed likely to follow from 

 Alexander's anger against Callisthenes. 3 The nature of this is quite in 



1 Plutarch, Vit. sec. 77. 2 Diodorus, xix. 11; Plutarch, foe. cit. 



a Although Callisthenes had been put to death five years before, *'. e, in B. c, 

 328 ! See Clinton, Fast. Hel. ii. p. 376. 



