Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/237

 ALEXANDER. 229 " Therefore," said he, " if you will show the force of your eloquence, tell my Macedonians their faults, and dispraise them, that by hearing their errors they may learn to be better for the future." Callisthenes presently obeyed him, retracting all he had said before, and, inveighing against the Macedonians with great freedom, added, that Philip thrived and grew powerful, chiefly by the discord of the Grecians, applying this verse to him : — In civil strife e'en villains rise to fame ; which so offended the Macedonians, that he was odiou.* to them ever after. And Alexander said, that instead ot his eloquence, he had only made his ill-will appear in what he had spoken. Hermippus assures us, that one Strcebus, a servant whom Callisthenes kept to read to him, gave this account of these passages afterwards to Aristotle ; and that when he perceived the king grow more and more averse to him, two or three times, as he was going away, he repeated the verses, — Death seiz'd at last on great Patroclus too, Though he in virtue far exceeded you. Not without reason, therefore, did Aristotle give this character of Callisthenes, that he was, indeed, a powerful speaker, but had no judgment. He acted certainly a true philosopher's part in positively refusing, as he did, to pay adoration ; and by speaking out openly against that which the best and gravest of the Macedonians only re- pined at in secret, he delivered the Grecians and Alexan- der himself from a great disgrace, when the practice was given up. But he ruined himself by it, because he went too roughly to work, as if he would have forced the king to that which he should have effected by reason and per- suasion. Chares of Mitylene writes, that at a banquet,