Chapter LIV: The Fall of Persia (2)

It now remained to kill Parmenion, who could not be safely left alive after the atrocities used towards Philotas; and to kill him, moreover, before he could have time to hear of them, since he was not only the oldest, most respected, and most influential of all Macedonian officers, but also in separate command of the great depot at Ecbatana. Alexander summoned to his presence one of the companions named Polydamas; a particular friend, comrade, or _aide-de-camp_, of Parmenion. Every friend of Philotas felt at this moment that his life hung by a thread; so that Polydamas entered the king’s presence in extreme terror, as he was ordered to bring with him his two younger brothers. Alexander addressed him, denouncing Parmenion as a traitor, and intimating that Polydamas would be required to carry a swift and confidential message to Ecbatana, ordering his execution. Polydamas was selected as the attached friend of Parmenion, and therefore as best calculated to deceive him. Two letters were placed in his hands, addressed to Parmenion; one from Alexander himself, conveying ostensibly military communications and orders; the other, signed with the seal-ring of the deceased Philotas, and purporting to be addressed by the son to the father. Together with these, Polydamas received the real and important despatch, addressed by Alexander to Cleander and Menidas, the officers immediately subordinate to Parmenion at Ecbatana; proclaiming Parmenion guilty of high treason, and directing them to kill him at once. Large rewards were offered to Polydamas if he performed this commission with success, while his two brothers were retained as hostages against scruples or compunction. He promised even more than was demanded--too happy to purchase this reprieve from what had seemed impending death. Furnished with native guides and with swift dromedaries, he struck by the straightest road across the desert of Khorasan, and arrived at Ecbatana on the eleventh day--a distance usually requiring more than thirty days to traverse. Entering the camp by night, without the knowledge of Parmenion, he delivered his despatch to Cleander, with whom he concerted measures. On the morrow he was admitted to Parmenion, while walking in his garden with Cleander and the other officers marked out by Alexander’s order as his executioners. Polydamas ran to embrace his old friend, and was heartily welcomed by the unsuspecting veteran, to whom he presented the letters professedly coming from Alexander and Philotas. While Parmenion was absorbed in perusal, he was suddenly assailed by a mortal stab from the hand and sword of Cleander. Other wounds were heaped upon him as he fell, by the remaining officers--the last even after life had departed.

The soldiers in Ecbatana, on hearing of this bloody deed, burst into furious mutiny, surrounded the garden wall, and threatened to break in for the purpose of avenging their general, unless Polydamas and the other murderers should be delivered to them. But Cleander, admitting a few of the ringleaders, exhibited to them Alexander’s written orders, to which the soldiers yielded, not without murmurs of reluctance and indignation. Most of them dispersed, yet a few remained, entreating permission to bury Parmenion’s body. Even this was long refused by Cleander, from dread of the king’s displeasure. At last, however, thinking it prudent to comply in part, he cut off the head, delivering to them the trunk alone for burial. The head was sent to Alexander.

Among the many tragical deeds recounted throughout the course of this history, there is none more revolting than the fate of these two generals. Alexander, violent in all his impulses, displayed on this occasion a personal rancour worthy of his ferocious mother Olympias, exasperated rather than softened by the magnitude of past services. When we see the greatest officers of the Macedonian army directing in person, and under the eye of Alexander, the laceration and burning of the naked body of their colleague Philotas, and assassinating with their own hands the veteran Parmenion, we feel how much we have passed out of the region of Greek civic feeling into that of the more savage Illyrian warrior, partially orientalised. It is not surprising to read, that Antipater, viceroy of Macedonia, who had shared with Parmenion the favour and confidence of Philip as well as of Alexander, should tremble when informed of such proceedings, and cast about for a refuge against the like possibilities to himself. Many other officers were alike alarmed and disgusted with the transactions. Hence Alexander, opening and examining the letters sent home from his army to Macedonia, detected such strong expressions of indignation, that he thought it prudent to transfer many pronounced malcontents into a division by themselves, parting them off from the remaining army. Instead of appointing any substitute for Philotas in the command of the companion cavalry, he cast that body into two divisions, nominating Hephæstion to the command of one, and Clitus to that of the other.

CAPTURE OF BESSUS

[Sidenote: [330-329 B.C.]]

The autumn and winter (330-329 B.C.) were spent by Alexander in reducing Drangiana, Gedrosia, Arachosia, and the Paropamisadæ, the modern Seistan, Afghanistan, and the western part of Kabul, lying between Ghazna on the north, Kandahar or Kelar on the south, and Furrah in the west. He experienced no combined resistance, but his troops suffered severely from cold and privation. Near the southern termination of one of the passes of the Hindu-Kush (apparently northeast of the town of Kabul) he founded a new city, called Alexandria ad Caucasum, where he planted seven thousand old soldiers, Macedonians, and others as colonists. Towards the close of winter he crossed over the mighty range of the Hindu-Kush; a march of fifteen days through regions of snow, and fraught with hardship to his army. On reaching the north side of these mountains, he found himself in Bactria.

(After Bardon)]

The Bactrian leader Bessus, who had assumed the title of king, could muster no more than a small force, with which he laid waste the country, and then retired across the river Oxus into Sogdiana, destroying all the boats. Alexander overran Bactria with scarcely any resistance; the chief places, Bactra (Balkh) and Aornus, surrendering to him on the first demonstration of attack. Having named Artabazus satrap of Bactria, and placed Archelaus with a garrison in Aornus, he marched northward towards the river Oxus, the boundary between Bactria and Sogdiana. It was a march of extreme hardship; reaching for two or three days across a sandy desert destitute of water, and under very hot weather. The Oxus, six furlongs in breadth, deep, and rapid, was the most formidable river that the Macedonians had yet seen. Alexander transported his army across it on the tent-skins inflated and stuffed with straw. It seems surprising that Bessus did not avail himself of this favourable opportunity for resisting a passage in itself so difficult; he had however been abandoned by his Bactrian cavalry at the moment when he quitted their territory. Some of his companions, Spitamenes and others, terrified at the news that Alexander had crossed the Oxus, were anxious to make their own peace by betraying their leader. They sent a proposition to this effect; upon which Ptolemy with a light division was sent forward by Alexander, and was enabled, by extreme celerity of movements, to surprise and seize Bessus in a village. Alexander ordered that he should be held in chains, naked, and with a collar round his neck, at the side of the road along which the army were marching. On reaching the spot, Alexander stopped his chariot, and sternly demanded from Bessus, on what pretence he had first arrested, and afterwards slain, his king and benefactor Darius. Bessus replied, that he had not done this single-handed; others were concerned in it along with him, to procure for themselves lenient treatment from Alexander. The king said no more, but ordered Bessus to be scourged, and then sent back as prisoner to Bactra.[31]

In his onward march, Alexander approached a small town, inhabited by the Branchidæ; descendants of those Branchidæ near Miletus on the coast of Ionia, who had administered the great temple and oracle of Apollo on Cape Posidium, and who had yielded up the treasures of that temple to the Persian king Xerxes, 150 years before. This surrender had brought upon them so much odium, that when the dominion of Xerxes was overthrown on the coast, they retired with him into the interior of Asia. Delighted to find themselves once more in commerce with Greeks, they poured forth to meet and welcome the army, tendering all that they possessed. Alexander, when he heard who they were and what was their parentage, gave orders to massacre the entire population--men, women, and children. They were slain without arms or attempt at resistance, resorting to nothing but prayers and suppliant manifestations. Alexander next commanded the walls to be levelled, and the sacred groves cut down, so that no habitable site might remain, nor anything except solitude and sterility. Such was the revenge taken upon these unhappy victims for the deeds of their ancestors in the fourth or fifth generation before. Alexander doubtless considered himself to be executing the wrath of Apollo against an accursed race who had robbed the temple of the god. The Macedonian expedition had been proclaimed to be undertaken originally for the purpose of revenging upon the contemporary Persians the ancient wrongs done to Greece by Xerxes; so that Alexander would follow out the same sentiment in revenging upon the contemporary Branchidæ the acts of their ancestors--yet more guilty than Xerxes, in his belief. The massacre of this unfortunate population was in fact an example of human sacrifice on the largest scale, offered to the gods by the religious impulses of Alexander, and worthy to be compared to that of the Carthaginian general Hannibal, when he sacrificed three thousand Grecian prisoners on the field of Himera, where his grandfather Hamilcar had been slain seventy years before.

LIMIT OF ALEXANDER’S PROGRESS NORTHWARD

[Sidenote: [329-327 B.C.]]

Alexander then continued his onward progress, first to Maracanda (Samarcand), the chief town of Sogdiana--next to the river Jaxartes, which he and his companions, in their imperfect geographical notions, believed to be the Tanaïs, the boundary between Asia and Europe. In his march, he left garrisons in various towns, but experienced no resistance, though detached bodies of the natives hovered on his flanks.

Here, on the river Jaxartes, Alexander projected the foundation of a new city to bear his name; intended as a protection against incursions from the Scythian nomads on the other side of the river. He planted in it some Macedonian veterans and Grecian mercenaries, together with volunteer settlers from the natives around. An army of Scythian nomads, showing themselves on the other side of the river, piqued his vanity to cross over and attack them. Carrying over a division of his army on inflated skins, he defeated them with little difficulty, pursuing them briskly into the desert. But the weather was intensely hot, and the army suffered much from thirst; while the little water to be found was so bad, that it brought upon Alexander a diarrhœa which endangered his life. This chase of a few miles on the right bank of the Jaxartes (seemingly in the present Khanat of Khokand), marked the utmost limit of Alexander’s progress northward.

Shortly afterwards, a Macedonian detachment, unskilfully conducted, was destroyed in Sogdiana by Spitamenes and the Scythians: a rare misfortune, which Alexander avenged by overrunning the region near the river Polytimetus (the Kohik), and putting to the sword the inhabitants of all the towns which he took. He then recrossed the Oxus, to rest during the extreme season of winter at Zariaspa in Bactria, from whence his communications with the West and with Macedonia were more easy, and where he received various reinforcements of Greek troops.

Alexander, distributing his army into five divisions, traversed the country and put down all resistance, while he also took measures for establishing several military posts, or new towns, in convenient places. After some time the whole army was reunited at the chief place of Sogdiana, Maracanda, where some halt and repose was given.

ALEXANDER MURDERS HIS FRIEND

[Sidenote: [327 B.C.]]

During this halt at Maracanda (Samarcand), 328-327 B.C., the memorable banquet occurred wherein Alexander murdered Clitus. Clitus had saved his life at the battle of the Granicus, by cutting off the sword arm of the Persian Spithridates, when already uplifted to strike him from behind. Since the death of Philotas, the important function of general of the companion cavalry had been divided between Hephæstion and Clitus. Moreover, the family of Clitus had been attached to Philip, by ties so ancient, that his sister, Lanice, had been selected as the nurse of Alexander himself when a child. Two of her sons had already perished in the Asiatic battles. If, therefore, there were any man who stood high in the service, or was privileged to speak his mind freely to Alexander, it was Clitus.

In this banquet at Maracanda, when wine, according to the Macedonian habit, had been abundantly drunk, and when Alexander, Clitus, and most of the other guests were already nearly intoxicated, enthusiasts or flatterers heaped immoderate eulogies upon the king’s previous achievements. They exalted him above all the most venerated legendary heroes; they proclaimed that his superhuman deeds proved his divine paternity, and that he had earned an apotheosis like Hercules, which nothing but envy could withhold from him even during his life. Alexander himself joined in these boasts, and even took credit for the later victories of the reign of his father, whose abilities and glory he depreciated. To the old Macedonian officers, such an insult cast on the memory of Philip was deeply offensive. But among them all, none had been more indignant than Clitus, with the growing insolence of Alexander--his assumed filiation from Zeus Ammon, which put aside Philip as unworthy--his preference for Persian attendants, who granted or refused admittance to his person--his extending to Macedonian soldiers the contemptuous treatment habitually endured by Asiatics, and even allowing them to be scourged by Persian hands and Persian rods. The pride of a Macedonian general in the stupendous successes of the last five years, was effaced by his mortification, when he saw that they tended only to merge his countrymen amidst a crowd of servile Asiatics, and to inflame the prince with high-flown aspirations transmitted from Xerxes or Ochus. But whatever might be the internal thoughts of Macedonian officers, they held their peace before Alexander, whose formidable character and exorbitant self-estimation would tolerate no criticism.

At the banquet of Maracanda, this long-suppressed repugnance found an issue, accidental, indeed, and unpremeditated, but for that very reason all the more violent and unmeasured. The wine, which made Alexander more boastful, and his flatterers fulsome to excess, overpowered altogether the reserve of Clitus. He rebuked the impiety of those who degraded the ancient heroes in order to make a pedestal for Alexander. He protested against the injustice of disparaging the exalted and legitimate fame of Philip, whose achievements he loudly extolled, pronouncing them to be equal, and even superior, to those of his son. For the exploits of Alexander, splendid as they were, had been accomplished, not by himself alone, but by that unconquerable Macedonian force which he had found ready made to his hands; whereas those of Philip had been his own--since he had found Macedonia prostrate and disorganised, and had to create for himself both soldiers and a military system. The great instruments of Alexander’s victories had been Philip’s old soldiers, whom he now despised, and among them Parmenion, whom he had put to death.

Remarks such as these, poured forth in the coarse language of a half-intoxicated Macedonian veteran, provoked loud contradiction from many, and gave poignant offence to Alexander; who now for the first time heard the open outburst of disapprobation, before concealed and known to him only by surmise. But wrath and contradiction, both from him and from others, only made Clitus more reckless in the outpouring of his own feelings, now discharged with delight after having been so long pent up. He passed from the old Macedonian soldiers to himself individually. Stretching forth his right hand towards Alexander, he exclaimed, “Recollect that you owe your life to me; this hand preserved you at the Granicus. Listen to the outspoken language of truth, or else abstain from asking freemen to supper, and confine yourself to the society of barbaric slaves.” All these reproaches stung Alexander to the quick. But nothing was so intolerable to him as the respectful sympathy for Parmenion, which brought to his memory one of the blackest deeds of his life--and the reminiscence of his preservation at the Granicus, which lowered him into the position of a debtor towards the very censor under whose reproof he was now smarting.

At length wrath and intoxication together drove him into uncontrollable fury. He started from his couch, and felt for his dagger to spring at Clitus; but the dagger had been put out of reach by one of his attendants. In a loud voice and with the Macedonian word of command, he summoned the bodyguards and ordered the trumpeter to sound an alarm. But no one obeyed so grave an order, given in his condition of drunkenness. His principal officers, Ptolemy, Perdiccas, and others, clung round him, held his arms and body, and besought him to abstain from violence; others at the same time tried to silence Clitus and hurry him out of the hall, which had now become a scene of tumult and consternation. But Clitus was not in a humour to confess himself in the wrong by retiring; while Alexander, furious at the opposition now, for the first time, offered to his will, exclaimed that his officers held him in chains as Bessus had held Darius, and left him nothing but the name of a king. Though anxious to restrain his movements, they doubtless did not dare to employ much physical force; so that his great personal strength, and continued efforts, presently set him free. He then snatched a pike from one of the soldiers, rushed upon Clitus, and thrust him through on the spot, exclaiming, “Go now to Philip and Parmenion.”

REMORSE OF ALEXANDER

No sooner was the deed perpetrated than the feelings of Alexander underwent an entire revolution. The spectacle of Clitus, a bleeding corpse on the floor--the marks of stupefaction and horror evident in all the spectators, and the reaction from a furious impulse instantaneously satiated--plunged him at once into the opposite extreme of remorse and self-condemnation. Hastening out of the hall, and retiring to bed, he passed three days in an agony of distress, without food or drink. He burst into tears and multiplied exclamations on his own mad act; he dwelt upon the names of Clitus and Lanice with the debt of gratitude which he owed to each, and denounced himself as unworthy to live after having requited such services with a foul murder. His friends at length prevailed on him to take food, and return to activity. All joined in trying to restore his self-satisfaction. The Macedonian army passed a public vote that Clitus had been justly slain, and that his body should remain unburied; which afforded opportunity to Alexander to reverse the vote, and to direct that it should be buried by his own order. The prophets comforted him by the assurance that his murderous impulse had arisen, not from his own natural mind, but from a maddening perversion intentionally brought on by the god Dionysus, to avenge the omission of a sacrifice due to him on the day of the banquet, but withheld. Lastly, the Greek sophist or philosopher, Anaxarchus of Abdera, revived Alexander’s spirits by well-timed flattery, treating his sensibility as nothing better than generous weakness; reminding him that in his exalted position of conqueror and Great King, he was entitled to prescribe what was right and just, instead of submitting himself to laws dictated from without. Callisthenes the philosopher was also summoned, along with Anaxarchus, to the king’s presence, for the same purpose of offering consolatory reflections. But he is said to have adopted a tone of discourse altogether different, and to have given offence rather than satisfaction to Alexander.

To such remedial influences, and probably still more to the absolute necessity for action, Alexander’s remorse at length yielded. Like the other emotions of his fiery soul, it was violent and overpowering while it lasted. But it cannot be shown to have left any durable trace on his character, nor any effects justifying the unbounded admiration of Arrian; who has little but blame to bestow on the murdered Clitus, while he expresses the strongest sympathy for the mental suffering of the murderer.

After ten days, Alexander again put his army in motion, to complete the subjugation of Sogdiana. He found no enemy capable of meeting him in pitched battle; yet Spitamenes, with the Sogdians and some Scythian allies, raised much hostility of detail, which it cost another year to put down. Alexander underwent the greatest fatigue and hardships in his marches through the mountainous parts of this wide, rugged, and poorly supplied country, with rocky positions, strong by nature, which his enemies sought to defend. One of these fastnesses, held by a native chief named Sisymithres, seemed almost unattackable, and was indeed taken rather by intimidation than by actual force. The Scythians, after a partial success over a small Macedonian detachment, were at length so thoroughly beaten and overawed, that they slew Spitamenes, and sent his head to the conqueror as a propitiatory offering.

After a short rest at Nautaca during the extreme winter, Alexander resumed operations, by attacking a strong post called the Sogdian Rock, whither a large number of fugitives had assembled, with an ample supply of provision. It was a precipice supposed to be inexpugnable; and would seemingly have proved so, in spite of the energy and abilities of Alexander, had not the occupants altogether neglected their guard, and yielded at the mere sight of a handful of Macedonians who had scrambled up the precipice. Among the captives taken by Alexander on this rock, were the wife and family of the Bactrian chief Oxyartes; one of whose daughters, named Roxane, so captivated Alexander by her beauty that he resolved to make her his wife. He then passed out of Sogdiana into the neighbouring territory Parætacene, where there was another inexpugnable site called the Rock of Chorienes, which he was also fortunate enough to reduce.

From hence Alexander went to Bactra. Sending Craterus with a division to put the last hand to the reduction of Parætacene, he himself remained at Bactra, preparing for his expedition across the Hindu Kush to the conquest of India. As a security for tranquillity of Bactria and Sogdiana during his absence, he levied thirty thousand young soldiers from those countries to accompany him.

It was at Bactra that Alexander celebrated his marriage with the captive Roxane, in the spring of 327 B.C. Amidst the repose and festivities connected with that event, the oriental temper which he was acquiring displayed itself more forcibly than ever. He could no longer be satisfied without obtaining prostration, or worship, from Greeks and Macedonians as well as from Persians; a public and unanimous recognition of his divine origin and superhuman dignity. Some Greeks and Macedonians had already rendered to him this homage. Nevertheless to the greater number, in spite of their extreme deference and admiration for him, it was repugnant and degrading. Even the imperious Alexander shrank from issuing public and formal orders on such a subject; but a manœuvre was concerted, with his privity, by the Persians and certain compliant Greek sophists or philosophers, for the purpose of carrying the point by surprise.

During a banquet at Bactra, the philosopher Anaxarchus, addressing the assembly in a prepared harangue, extolled Alexander’s exploits as greatly surpassing those of Dionysus and Hercules. He proclaimed that Alexander had already done more than enough to establish a title to divine honours from the Macedonians; who, he said, would assuredly worship Alexander after his death, and ought in justice to worship him during his life, forthwith.

This harangue was applauded, and similar sentiments were enforced, by others favourable to the plan; who proceeded to set the example of immediate compliance, and were themselves the first to tender worship. Most of the Macedonian officers sat unmoved, disgusted at the speech. But though disgusted, they said nothing. To reply to a speech doubtless well-turned and flowing, required some powers of oratory; moreover, it was well known that whoever dared to reply stood marked out for the antipathy of Alexander. The fate of Clitus, who had arraigned the same sentiments in the banqueting hall of Maracanda, was fresh in the recollection of every one. The repugnance which many felt, but none ventured to express, at length found an organ in Callisthenes of Olynthus.

This philosopher, whose melancholy fate imparts a peculiar interest to his name, was nephew of Aristotle, and had enjoyed through his uncle an early acquaintance with Alexander during the boyhood of the latter. At the recommendation of Aristotle, Callisthenes had accompanied Alexander in his Asiatic expedition.

On occasion of the demonstration incited by Anaxarchus at the banquet, Callisthenes had been invited by Hephæstion to join in the worship intended to be proposed towards Alexander; and Hephæstion afterwards alleged, that he had promised to comply. But his actual conduct affords reasonable ground for believing that he made no such promise; for he not only thought it his duty to refuse the act of worship, but also to state publicly his reasons for disapproving it; the more so, as he perceived that most of the Macedonians present felt like himself. He contended that the distinction between gods and men was one which could not be confounded without impiety and wrong. Alexander had amply earned--as a man, a general, and a king--the highest honours compatible with humanity; but to exalt him into a god would be both an injury to him and an offence to the gods. Anaxarchus, he said, was the last person from whom such a proposition ought to come, because he was one of those whose only title to Alexander’s society was founded upon his capacity to give instructive and wholesome counsel.

Callisthenes spoke out what numbers of his hearers felt. The speech was so warmly applauded by the Macedonians present, especially the older officers, that Alexander thought it prudent to forbid all further discussion upon this delicate subject. Presently the Persians present, according to Asiatic custom, approached him and performed their prostration; after which Alexander pledged, in successive goblets of wine, those Greeks and Macedonians with whom he had held previous concert. To each of them the goblet was handed, and each, after drinking to answer the pledge, approached the king, made his prostration, and then received a salute. Lastly, Alexander sent the pledge to Callisthenes, who, after drinking like the rest, approached him for the purpose of receiving the salute but without any prostration. Of this omission Alexander was expressly informed by one of the companions; upon which he declined to admit Callisthenes to a salute. The latter retired, observing, “Then I shall go away, worse off than others as far as the salute goes.”

Callisthenes certainly would have done well to withdraw earlier (if indeed he could have withdrawn without offence) from the camp of Alexander, in which no lettered Greek could now associate without abnegating his freedom of speech and sentiment, and emulating the servility of Anaxarchus. But being present, as Callisthenes was, in the hall at Bactra when the proposition of Anaxarchus was made, and when silence would have been assent--his protest against it was both seasonable and dignified for being fraught with danger to himself.

Callisthenes knew that danger well, and was quickly enabled to recognise it in the altered demeanour of Alexander towards him. He was, from that day, a marked man in two senses: first, to Alexander himself, as well as to the rival sophists and all promoters of the intended deification--for hatred, and for getting up some accusatory pretence such as might serve to ruin him; next, to the more free-spirited Macedonians, indignant witnesses of Alexander’s increased insolence, and admirers of the courageous Greek who had protested against the motion of Anaxarchus. By such men he was doubtless much extolled; which praises aggravated his danger, as they were sure to be reported to Alexander. The pretext for his ruin was not long wanting.

CONSPIRACY OF THE ROYAL PAGES

Among those who admired and sought the conversation of Callisthenes, was Hermolaus, one of the royal pages--the band, selected from noble Macedonian families, who did duty about the person of the king. It had happened that this young man, one of Alexander’s companions in the chase, on seeing a wild boar rushing up to attack the king, darted his javelin, and slew the animal. Alexander, angry to be anticipated in killing the boar, ordered Hermolaus to be scourged before all the other pages and deprived him of his horse. Thus humiliated and outraged--for an act not merely innocent, but the omission of which, if Alexander had sustained any injury from the boar, might have been held punishable--Hermolaus became resolutely bent on revenge. He enlisted in the project his intimate friend Sostratus, with several others among the pages; and it was agreed among them to kill Alexander in his chamber, on the first night when they were all on guard together. The appointed night arrived, without any divulgation of their secret; yet the scheme was frustrated by the accident, that Alexander continued till daybreak drinking with his officers, and never retired to bed. On the morrow, one of the conspirators, becoming alarmed or repentant, divulged the scheme to his friend Charicles, with the names of those concerned. Eurylochus, brother to Charicles, apprised by him of what he had heard, immediately informed Ptolemy, through whom it was conveyed to Alexander. By Alexander’s order, the persons indicated were arrested and put to the torture; under which they confessed that they had themselves conspired to kill him, but named no other accomplices, and even denied that anyone else was privy to the scheme. In this denial they persisted, though extreme suffering was applied to extort the revelation of new names. They were then brought up and arraigned as conspirators before the assembled Macedonian soldiers. There the confession was repeated. It is even said that Hermolaus, in repeating it, boasted of the enterprise as both legitimate and glorious; denouncing the tyranny and cruelty of Alexander as having become insupportable to a freeman. Whether such boast was actually made or not, the persons brought up were pronounced guilty, and stoned to death forthwith by the soldiers.

The pages thus executed were young men of good Macedonian families, for whose condemnation accordingly Alexander had thought it necessary to invoke--what he was sure of obtaining against any one--the sentence of the soldiers. To satisfy his hatred against Callisthenes--not a Macedonian, but only a Greek citizen, one of the remnants of the subverted city of Olynthus--no such formality was required. In his case, therefore, as in that of Philotas before, it was necessary to pick up matter of suspicious tendency from his reported remarks and conversations. He was alleged to have addressed dangerous and inflammatory language to the pages, holding up Alexander to odium, instigating them to conspiracy, and pointing out Athens as a place of refuge; he was moreover well known to have been often in conversation with Hermolaus. For a man of the violent temper and omnipotent authority of Alexander, such indications were quite sufficient as grounds of action against one whom he hated.

On this occasion, we have the state of Alexander’s mind disclosed by himself, in one of the references to his letters given by Plutarch. Writing to Craterus and to others immediately afterwards, Alexander distinctly stated that the pages throughout all their torture had deposed against no one but themselves. Nevertheless, in another letter addressed to Antipater in Macedonia, he used these expressions: “The pages were stoned to death by the Macedonians; but I myself shall punish the sophist, as well as those who sent him out here, and those who harbour in their cities conspirators against me.” The sophist Callisthenes had been sent out by Aristotle, who is here designated; and probably the Athenians after him. Fortunately for Aristotle, he was not at Bactra, but at Athens. That he could have had any concern in the conspiracy of the pages, was impossible. In this savage outburst of menace against his absent preceptor, Alexander discloses the real state of feeling which prompted him to the destruction of Callisthenes--hatred towards that spirit of citizenship and free speech, which Callisthenes not only cherished, in common with Aristotle and most other literary Greeks, but had courageously manifested in his protest against the motion for worshipping a mortal.

Callisthenes was first put to the torture and then hanged. His tragical fate excited a profound sentiment of sympathy and indignation among the philosophers of antiquity.

The halts of Alexander were formidable to friends and companions; his marches, to the unconquered natives whom he chose to treat as enemies.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[28] [Curtius is obviously speaking of the Babylon of his own day (the early part of the first century A.D.), and assuming, no doubt correctly, that the venerable city had not greatly changed since the time of Alexander. The reader will recall the tales of Babylon quoted from Herodotus in our first volume.]

[29] [Grote values this at £11,500,000 which amounts to about $55,000,000. Reckoned as Æginetan talents the sum would be far greater. Grote says it would seem incredible were it not that the treasures of Persepolis were found far greater.]

[30] [This sum, which Grote reckons at £27,600,000 or $138,000,000, need not be considered impossible, viewing the extent and the extortion of Persian despotism; the soldiers were paid by the provinces that contributed them; the servants of the government had no salaries in cash from above; and the royal disbursements for necessary expenses were accordingly small. Grote notes that when Nadia-Shah took Delhi in 1739, he found a treasure stated as £32,000,000--even more than Alexander’s loot. A pride, too, was taken in vast hoards of precious metal by the oriental despots. Prof. Bury[d] notes how the sudden circulation of such an amount would “perturb the markets of the world.”]

[31] [Later he was brought forth and Alexander had his nose and ears cut off. Mutilation was abhorrent to the Greeks, and even Arrian[e] (IV, 7) rebukes his hero for this atrocity. Bessus was then turned over to the Medes and Persians who, according to Diodorus,[f] XVII, 9,“after they had put him to all manner of torments, and used him with all the despite and disgrace imaginable, cut his body into small pieces and hurled every part here and there away out of their slings.” Plutarch,[g] however, says that two straight trees were bent together, and one of Bessus’ legs fastened to each so that when they were released and sprang apart, his body was torn asunder.]