The Anabasis of Alexander/Book IV/Chapter IX

by Arrian

Layout 2

CHAPTER IX.

Alexander's Grief for Clitus.

I think Clitus deserving of severe censure for his insolent behaviour to his king, while at the same time I pity Alexander for his mishap, because on that occasion he showed himself the slave of two vices, anger and drunkenness, by neither of which is it seemly for a prudent man to be enslaved. But then on the other hand I think his subsequent behaviour worthy of praise, because directly after he had done the deed he recognised that it was a horrible one. Some of his biographers even say that he propped the pike against the wall with the intention of falling upon it himself, thinking that it was not proper for him to live who had killed his friend when under the influence of wine. Most historians do not mention this, but say that he went off to bed and lay there lamenting, calling Clitus himself by name, and his sister Lanice, daughter of Dropidas, who had been his nurse. He exclaimed that having reached man's estate he had forsooth bestowed on her a noble reward for her care in rearing him, as she lived to see her own sons die fighting on his behalf, and the king slaying her brother with his own hand.^[1] He did not cease calling himself the murderer of his friends; and for three days rigidly abstained from food and drink, and paid no attention whatever to his personal appearance. Some of the soothsayers revealed that, the avenging wrath of Dionysus had been the cause of his conduct, because he had omitted the sacrifice to that deity.^[2] At last with great difficulty he was induced by his companions to touch food and to pay proper attention to his person.^[3] He then paid to Dionysus the sacrifice due to him, since he was not at all unwilling to attribute the fatality rather to the avenging wrath of the deity than to his own depravity. I think Alexander deserves great praise for this, that he did not obstinately persevere in evil, or still worse become a defender and advocate of the wrong which had been done, but confessed that he had committed a crime, being a man and not a god. There are some who say that Anaxarchus the Sophist^[4] was summoned into Alexander's presence to give him consolation. Finding him lying down and groaning, he laughed at him, and said that he did not know that the wise men of old for this reason made Justice an assessor of Zeus, because whatever was done by him was justly done^[5]; and therefore also that which was done by the Great King ought to be deemed just, in the first place by the king himself, and then by the rest of men. They say that Alexander was then greatly consoled by these remarks.^[6] But I assert that Anaxarchus did Alexander a great injury and one still greater than that by which he was then oppressed, if he really thought this to be the opinion of a wise man, that forsooth it is proper for a king to come to hasty conclusions and act unjustly, and that whatever is done by a king must be deemed just, no matter how it is done. There is also a current report that Alexander wished men to prostrate themselves before him as to a god, entertaining the notion that Ammon was his father, rather than Philip; and that he now showed his admiration of the customs of the Persians and Medea by changing the style of his dress, and by the alteration he made in the general etiquette of his court. There were not wanting those who in regard to these matters gave way to his wishes with the design of flattering him;" among others being Anaxarchus, one of the philosophers attending his court, and Agia, an Argive who waa an epic poet.^[7]

---

1. Cf. Curtius (viii. 3 and 6), who calls the sister of Clitus, Hellauioe.
2. From Plutarch (Alex., 13) we learn that Alexander imagined he had incurred the avenging wrath of Bacchus hy destroying Thebes, the birthplace of that deity, on which account it was supposed to be under his tutelary care.
3. Curtius (viii. 6) says, that in order to console the king, the Macedonian army passed a vote that Clitus had been justly slain, and that his corpse should not be buried. But the king ordered its burial.
4. A philosopher of Abdera, and pupll of Democritus. After Alexander's death, Anaxarchus was thrown by shipwreck into the hands of Nioocreon, king of Cyprus, to whom he had given offence, and who had him pounded to death in a mortar.
5. Cf. Sophocles (Oedipus Co?., 1382; Antigone, 451);; Hesiod (Opera et Diet, 254-257); Pindar (Olympia, viii. 28); Demosthenes [Advert. Arittogiton, p. 772); Herodotus, iii. 31.
6. Plutarch (Alex., 52) tells us that Callisthenes the philosopher was also summoned with Anaxarchus to administer consolation, but he adopted such a different tone that Alexander was displeased with him.
7. Curtius (viii. 17) says that Agis was the composer of very poor poems.