Alexander

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. VII. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1919.

As to the death of Callisthenes, some say that he was hanged by Alexander’s orders, others that he was bound hand and foot and died of sickness, and Chares says that after his arrest he was kept in fetters seven months, that he might be tried before a full council when Aristotle was present, but that about the time when Alexander was wounded in India, he died from obesity and the disease of lice.[*](Cf.Arrian, Anab. iv. 14, 3 f., where other accounts still are mentioned.)

This, however, belongs to a later time.[*](The spring of 327 B.C.) Meanwhile Demaratus the Corinthian, who was now well on in years, was eagerly desirous of going up to Alexander; and when he had seen him, he said that those Greeks were deprived of a great pleasure who had died before seeing Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius.[*](Cf. chapter xxxvii. 4.) However, he did not long enjoy the king’s good will towards him, but died from debility. His obsequies were magnificent, and the army raised in his memory a mound of great circumference and eighty cubits in height. His ashes were carried down to the sea-board on a four-horse chariot splendidly adorned.

Alexander was now about to cross the mountains into India,[*](In the late spring of 327 B.C.) and since he saw that his army was by this time cumbered with much booty and hard to move, at break of day, after the baggage-waggons had been loaded, he burned first those which belonged to himself and his companions, and then gave orders to set fire to those of the Macedonians. And the planning of the thing turned out to be a larger and more formidable matter than its execution.

For it gave annoyance to a few only of the soldiers, while the most of them, with rapturous shouts and war-cries, shared their necessaries with those who were in need of them, and what was superfluous they burned and destroyed with their own hands, thus filling Alexander with zeal and eagerness. Besides, he was already greatly feared, and inexorable in the chastisement of a transgressor. For instance, when a certain Menander, one of his companions, who had been put in command of a garrison, refused to remain there, he put him to death; and Orsodates, a Barbarian who had revolted from him, he shot down with his own hand.