Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/249

 DEMANL' OF ALEXANDER TO BE WORSHlPrhD. 217 Insofar as we can judge from one or two specimens, Kallisthenes was full of complimentary tribute to tli6 hero of his history. But the character of Alexander himself had undergone a ma- terial change during the six years between his first landing in Asia and his campaign in Sogdiana. All his worst qualities had been developed by unparalleled success and by Asiatic example. He required larger doses of flattery, and had now come to thirst, not mei'ely for the reputation of divine paternity, but for the actual manifestations of worship as towards a god. To the literary Greeks who accompanied Alexander, this change in his temper must have been especially palpable and full of serious consequence ; since it was chiefly manifested, not at periods of active military duty, but at his hours of leisure, when he recreated himself by their conversation and discourses. Several of these Greeks — Anaxarchus, Kleon, the poet Agis of Argos — accommodated themselves to the change, and wound up their flatteries to the pitch required. Kallisthenes could not do so. He was a man of sedate character, of simple, severe, and almost unsocial habits — to whose sobriety the long Macedonian potations were distasteful. Aristotle said of him, that he was a great and powerful speaker, but that he had no judgment ; ac- cording to other reports, he was a vain and arrogant man, who boasted that Alexander's reputation and immortality were de- pendent on the composition and tone of his history. i Of per- 1 Arrian, iv. 10, 2 ; Plutarch, Alex. 53, 54. It is remarkable that Timscus denounced Kallisthenes as having in his historical work flattered Alexan- der to excess (Polyhius, xii. 12). Kallisthenes seems to have recognized various special interpositions of the gods, to aid Alexander's successes — see Fragments 25 and 36 of the Fragmenta Callisthenis in the edition of Didot. In reading the censure which Arrian passes on the arrogant pretensions of Kallisthenes, we ought at the same time to read the pretensions raised by Arrian on his own behalf as an historian (i. 12, 7-9) — Kai ettI tu<)e ovk UTta^iu ifxavTov tuv rrpuTuv h Ty (puvfi Tj) 'E/ih'idi, tlnep Kai 'A/*.t-^av(5pof tC)v iv Tuig OTrTiOig, etc. I doubt much whether Kallisthenes pitched his self- estimation so high. In this chapter, Arrian recounts, that Alexander en- vied Achilles for having been fortunate enough to obtain such a poet as Ho- mer for panegyrist; and Arrian laments that Alexander had not, as yet, found an historian equal to his deserts. This, in point of fact, is a reas- eertion of the same truth which Kallisthenes stands condemned for assert- VOL. XII. 19