Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/233

 ALEXANDER. 225 esteem theirs a happy lot, who have not lived to see theii* countrymen scourged with Median rods, and forced to sue to the Persians to have access to their king-." While he talked thus at random, and those near Alexander got up from their seats and began to revile him in turn, the elder men did what they could to compose the disorder. Alexander, in the mean time turning about to Xenodo- chus. the Cardian, and Artemius, the Colophonian, asked them if they were not of opinion that the Greeks, in comparison with the Macedonians, behaved themselves like so many demi-gods among wild beasts. But Clitus for all this would not give over, desiring Alexander to speak out if he had any thing more to say, or else why did he invite men who were freeborn and accustomed to speak their minds openly without restraint, to sup with him. He had better live and converse with barbarians and slaves who would not scruple to bow the knee to his Persian girdle and his white tunic. Which words so pro- voked Alexander, that not able to suppress his anger any longer, he threw one of the apples that lay upon the table at him, and hit him, and then looked about for his sword. But Aristophanes, one of his life-guard, had hid that out of the way, and others came about him and be- sought him, but in vain. For breaking from them, he called out aloud to his guards in the Macedonian lan- guage, which was a certain sign of some great disturb- ance in him, and commanded a trumpeter to sound, giv- ing him a blow with his clenched fist for not instantly obeying him ; though afterwards the same man was com- mended for disobeying an order which would have put the whole army into tumult and confusion. Clitus still refusing to yield, was with much trouble forced by his friends out of the room. But he came in again immedi- ately at another door, very irreverently and confidently singing the verses out of Euripides' s Andromache, — vol. iv. 15