tortures.  Alexander himself, in the letters which he wrote to Kraterus, Attalus, and Alketas immediately after the discovery of the plot, states that the royal pages, when put to the torture, declared that they alone had conspired, and that they had no accomplices.  “The pages,” Alexander goes on to say, “were stoned to death by the Macedonians, but I will myself punish the sophist, and those who sent him hither, and those who receive into their cities men that plot against me.”  In these words he evidently alludes to Aristotle:  for Kallisthenes was brought up in his house, being the son of Hero, Aristotle’s first cousin.  Some writers tell us that Kallisthenes was hanged by the orders of Alexander; others that he was thrown into chains and died of sickness.  Chares informs us that he was kept in confinement for seven months, in order that he might be tried in the presence of Aristotle himself, but that during the time when Alexander was wounded in India, he died of excessive corpulence, covered with vermin.

LVI.  This, however, took place after the period of which we write.  At this time Demaratus of Corinth, although an elderly man, was induced to travel as far as the court of Alexander:  and when he beheld him, said that the Greeks who had died before they saw Alexander sitting upon the throne of Darius, had lost one of the greatest pleasures in the world.

Demaratus by this speech gained great favour with the king, but lived but a short time to enjoy it, as he was soon carried off by sickness.  His funeral was conducted with the greatest magnificence, for the whole army was employed to raise a mound of great extent, and eighty cubits high, as a memorial of him; while his remains were placed in a splendidly equipped four-horse chariot and sent back to the sea-coast.

LVII.  As Alexander was now about to invade India, and observed that his army had become unwieldy and difficult to move in consequence of the mass of plunder with which the soldiers were encumbered, he collected all the baggage-waggons together one morning at daybreak, and first burned his own and those of his companions, after which he ordered those of the Macedonians to be set on fire.  This measure appears to have been more energetic than the occasion really required; and yet it proved more ruinous in the design than in the execution:  for although some of the soldiers were vexed at the order, most of them with enthusiastic shouts distributed their most useful property among those who were in want, burning and destroying all the rest with a cheerful alacrity which raised Alexander’s spirits to the highest pitch.  Yet Alexander was terrible and pitiless in all cases of dereliction of duty.  He put to death Menander, one of his personal friends, because he did not remain in a fort, where he had been appointed to command the garrison; and he shot dead with his own hand Orsodates, a native chief who had revolted from him.  At this time it happened that a ewe brought forth a lamb, upon whose head was a tiara in shape and colour like that of the King of Persia, with stones hanging on each side of it.