The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

The pages thus executed were young men of good Macedonian families, for whose condemnation accordingly Alexander had thought it necessary to invoke—what he was sure of obtaining against any one—the sentence of the soldiers. To satisfy his hatred against Callisthenes—not a Macedonian, but only a Greek citizen, one of the remnants of the subverted city of Olynthus—no such formality was required. In his case, therefore, as in that of Philotas before, it was necessary to pick up matter of suspicious tendency from his reported remarks and conversations. He was alleged to have addressed dangerous and inflammatory language to the pages, holding up Alexander to odium, instigating them to conspiracy, and pointing out Athens as a place of refuge; he was moreover well known to have been often in conversation with Hermolaus. For a man of the violent temper and omnipotent authority of Alexander, such indications were quite sufficient as grounds of action against one whom he hated.

On this occasion, we have the state of Alexander’s mind disclosed by himself, in one of the references to his letters given by Plutarch. Writing to Craterus and to others immediately afterwards, Alexander distinctly stated that the pages throughout all their torture had deposed against no one but themselves. Nevertheless, in another letter addressed to Antipater in Macedonia, he used these expressions: “The pages were stoned to death by the Macedonians; but I myself shall punish the sophist, as well as those who sent him out here, and those who harbour in their cities conspirators against me.” The sophist Callisthenes had been sent out by Aristotle, who is here designated; and probably the Athenians after him. Fortunately for Aristotle, he was not at Bactra, but at Athens. That he could have had any concern in the conspiracy of the pages, was impossible. In this savage outburst of menace against his absent preceptor, Alexander discloses the real state of feeling which prompted him to the destruction of Callisthenes—hatred towards that spirit of citizenship and free speech, which Callisthenes not only cherished, in common with Aristotle and most other literary Greeks, but had courageously manifested in his protest against the motion for worshipping a mortal.

Callisthenes was first put to the torture and then hanged. His tragical fate excited a profound sentiment of sympathy and indignation among the philosophers of antiquity.

The halts of Alexander were formidable to friends and companions; his marches, to the unconquered natives whom he chose to treat as enemies.c

FOOTNOTES

[28] [Curtius is obviously speaking of the Babylon of his own day (the early part of the first century A.D.), and assuming, no doubt correctly, that the venerable city had not greatly changed since the time of Alexander. The reader will recall the tales of Babylon quoted from Herodotus in our first volume.]