CONSPIRACY OF THE ROYAL PAGES
Among those who admired and sought the conversation of Callisthenes, was Hermolaus, one of the royal pages—the band, selected from noble Macedonian families, who did duty about the person of the king. It had happened that this young man, one of Alexander’s companions in the chase, on seeing a wild boar rushing up to attack the king, darted his javelin, and slew the animal. Alexander, angry to be anticipated in killing the boar, ordered Hermolaus to be scourged before all the other pages and deprived him of his horse. Thus humiliated and outraged—for an act not merely innocent, but the omission of which, if Alexander had sustained any injury from the boar, might have been held punishable—Hermolaus became resolutely bent on revenge. He enlisted in the project his intimate friend Sostratus, with several others among the pages; and it was agreed among them to kill Alexander in his chamber, on the first night when they were all on guard together. The appointed night arrived, without any divulgation of their secret; yet the scheme was frustrated by the accident, that Alexander continued till daybreak drinking with his officers, and never retired to bed. On the morrow, one of the conspirators, becoming alarmed or repentant, divulged the scheme to his friend Charicles, with the names of those concerned. Eurylochus, brother to Charicles, apprised by him of what he had heard, immediately informed Ptolemy, through whom it was conveyed to Alexander. By Alexander’s order, the persons indicated were arrested and put to the torture; under which they confessed that they had themselves conspired to kill him, but named no other accomplices, and even denied that anyone else was privy to the scheme. In this denial they persisted, though extreme suffering was applied to extort the revelation of new names. They were then brought up and arraigned as conspirators before the assembled Macedonian soldiers. There the confession was repeated. It is even said that Hermolaus, in repeating it, boasted of the enterprise as both legitimate and glorious; denouncing the tyranny and cruelty of Alexander as having become insupportable to a freeman. Whether such boast was actually made or not, the persons brought up were pronounced guilty, and stoned to death forthwith by the soldiers.
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]