220 HISTORY OF GREUCK. officers would feel indifference, if not contempt towards a rhetor like Kallisthenes, while towards Alexander they had the greatest deference short of actual worship. There ore few occasions on which the free spirit of Greek letters and Greek citizenship, in their protest against exorbitant individual insolence, appears more conspicuous and estimable than in the speech of Kal- listhenes.^ Arrian disapproves the purpose of Alexander, and strongly blames the motion of Anaxarchus ; nevertheless, such is his anxiety to find some excuse for Alexander, that he also blames Kallisthenes for unseasonable frankness, folly, and inso- lence, in offering opposition. He might have said with some truth, that Kallisthenes would have done well to w^ithdraw earlier (if indeed he could have withdrawn without offence) from the camp of Alexander, in which no lettered Greek could now asso- ciate without abnegating his freedom of speech and sentiment, and emulating the servility of Anaxarchus. But being present, as Kallisthenes was, in the hall at Baktra when the proposition of Anaxarchus was made, and when silence would have been assent — his protest against it was both seasonable and dignified; and all the more dignified for being fraught with danger to himself. Kallisthenes knew that danger well, and was quickly enabled to recognize it in the altered demeanor of Alexander towards liim. He was, from that day, a marked man in two senses : first, to Alexander himself, as well as to the rival sophists and all promoters of the intended deification, — for hatred, and for getting up some accusatory pretence such as might serve to ruin ' There was no sentiment more deeplj'^ rooted in the free Grecian mind, prior to Alexander's conquests, than the repugnance to arrogant aspirations nn the part of the fortunate man, swelling himself above the limits of iiumanity — and the belief that such aspirations were followed by the Ne- mesis of the gods. In the dj'ing speech which Xenophon puts into the mouth of Cyrus the Great, we find — "Ye gods, I thank you much, that I have been sensible of your care for me, and that I have never in my successes raised my thoughts above the measure of man" (Cyropaed. viii. 7. 3). Among the most striking illustrations of this sentiment is, the story of Solon and CrcEsus (Herodot. i. 32-34). I shall recount in the next chapter examples of monstrous flattery on the part of the Athenians, proving how this sentiment expired with their freedom.
