Alexander   

more uneasy and disagreeable to him.
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