Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/254

 222 HISTORY OF GREECE. 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 their confession was repeated. It is even said that Hermolaus, in repeating it, boasted of the en- terprise as legitimate and glorious; denouncing the tyranny and cruelty of Alexandtt as having become insupportable to a free- man. Whether such boast was actually made or not, the persons brought up were pronounced guilty, and stoned to death forth- with by the soldiers.^ The pages thus executed were young men of good Macedo- nian families, for whose condemnation accordingly, Alexander had thought it necessary to invoke — what he Avas sure of ob- taining against any one — the sentence of the soldiers. To eatisfy his hatred against Kallisthenes — not a Macedonian, but only a Greek citizen, one of the surviving remnants of the sub- verted city of Olynthus — no such formality was required.'* As yet, there was not a shadow of proof to implicate this philoso- pher ; for obnoxious as his name was known to be, Hermolaus and his companions had, with exemplary fortitude, declined to purchase the chance of respite from extreme torture by Y>ro- nouncing it. Their confessions, — all extorted by suffering, un- less confirmed by other evidence, of which we do not know whether any was taken — Avere hardly of the least value, even against themselves ; but against Kallisthenes, they had no bear- ing whatever ; nay, they tended indirectly, not to convict, but to absolve him. In his case, therefore, as in that of Philotas before, it was necessary to pick up matter of suspicious tendency from liis reported remarks and conversations. He was alleged" to ' Arrian, iv. 14, 4. Curtius expands this scene into great detail ; compos- ing a long si>iecli for Hermolaus, and another for Alexander (vL>i. 6, 7,8). He says that the soldiers who executed these pages, tortured them first, in order to manifest zeal for Alexander (viii. 8, 20). ' " Quem, si Macedo esset (Callisthenem), tecum introduxissem, dignissi- mum te discipulo magistrum : nunc Olynthio non idem. juris est" (Curtius, viii. 8, 19 — speech of Alexander before the soldiers addressing Hermolaus Dspeciallv). ' Plutarch. Alexand. 55 ; Arrian, iv. 10, 4.