Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/236

 228 ALEXANDER. was only to get his countrymen recalled from banish- ment, and to rebuild and repeople his native town.* Be- sides the envy which his great reputation raised, he also, by his own deportment, gave those who wished him ill, opportunity to do him mischief. For when he was in- vited to public entertainments, he would most times re- fuse to come, or if he were present at any, he put a con- straint upon the company by his austerity and silence, which seemed to intimate his disapproval of what he saw. So that Alexander himself said in application to him, That vain pretence to wisdom I detest, Where a man 's blind to his own interest.f Being with many more invited to sup with the king, he was called upon when the cup came to him, to make an oration extempore in praise of the Macedonians ; and he did it with such a flow of eloquence, that all who heard it rose from their seats to clap and applaud him, and threw their garland upon him ; only Alexander told him out of Euripides, I wonder not that you have spoke so well, 'Tis easy on good subjects to excel. stroyed, and for which Callisthenes perior knowledge and cleverness, hoped to obtain from Alexander had passed by this time into the the same favor which Philip show- common name for lecturers and ed for Aristotle's sake to Stagira. teachers in logic and (less prop- t A fragment from a lost play erly) in rhetoric. It was used, of Euripides. In the original it much as our word doctor is for is, " I hate the sophist who is not physician, as the familiar and half- sophos for himself." The word disparaging term for the higher sophist, however, is far from ex- class of reasoners rather than argu- pressing to us the original Greek ers, the philosophers, the moralists, meaning. Knowledge that does who at this time exercised among not know its own good, or clever- the Greeks, as may be seen just ness that is not clever for itself, above in the story of Clitus, a would be phrases more nearly sort of clerical function. 2quivalent. Sophistes, which at
 * Olynthus, which Philip had de- first meant one who professed su-