Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/280

 228 Outlines of European History Early in those tremendous marches eastward, after Darius's death, Philotas, son of Parmenio, had learned of a conspiracy against Alexander's life, but his bitterness and estrangement were such that he failed to report his guilty knowledge to the king. The conspirators were all given a fair and legal trial, and Alexander himself suffered the bitterness of seeing a whole group of his former friends and companions, including Philotas, condemned and executed in the presence of the army. The trusted Parmenio, father of Philotas, still guarding the Persian treasure at Ecbatana, was also implicated, and a messenger was sent back with orders for the old general's immediate execution. This was but the beginning of the ordeal through which the man Alexander was to pass, in order that the world-king Alex- ander might mount the throne of a god. Clitus also, who had saved his life at Granicus, was filled with grief and indignation at Alexander's political course. At a royal feast, where these matters intruded upon the conversation, Clitus was guilty of unguarded criticisms of his lord and then, entirely losing his self-mastery, he finally heaped such unbridled re- proaches upon the king that Alexander, rising in uncontrollable rage, seized a spear from a guard and thrust it through the bosom of the man to whom he owed his life. As we see him thereupon sitting for three days in his tent, speechless with grief and remorse, refusing all food, and prevented only by his officers from taking his own life, we gather some slight impression of the terrible personal cost of Alexander's state policy. Similarly the demand that all should prostrate themselves and kiss his feet on entering his presence cost him the friendship of the historian Callisthenes. For, not long after, this friend was likewise found criminally guilty toward the king in connection with a conspiracy of the noble Macedonian pages who served Alexander. Trusted and admired as he had been by Alexander, Callisthenes too lost his life. He was a nephew of the king's old teacher, Aristotle, and thus the friendship between master and royal pupil was transformed into bitter enmity.