Calisthenes,
Plutarch
...It happened that these two philosophers met at an entertainment where
conversation turned on the subject of climate and the temperature of the
air. Callisthenes joined with their opinion, who held that those countries
were colder, and the winter sharper there than in Greece. Anaxarchus would
by no means allow this, but argued against it with some heat. "Surely,"
said Callisthenes, "you cannot but admit this country to be colder
than Greece, for there you used to have but one threadbare cloak to keep
out the coldest winter, and here you have three good warm mantles one over
another." This piece of raillery irritated Anaxarchus and the other
pretenders to learning, and the crowd of flatterers in general could not
endure to see Callisthenes so much admired and followed by the youth, and
no less esteemed by the older men for his orderly life and his gravity
and for being contented with his condition; and confirming what he had
professed about the object he had in his journey to Alexander, that it
was only to get his countrymen recalled from banishment, and to rebuild
and repeople his native town. Besides 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 invited to public entertainments, he
would most times refuse to come, or if he were present at any, he put a
constraint 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." 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." "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 odious to them ever after. And Alexander said,
that instead of his eloquence, he had only made his ill-will appear in
what he had spoken. Hermippus assures us that one Stroebus, 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 repined at in secret, he delivered
the Grecians and Alexander 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