Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/260

252 ALEXANDER. to those who accused him, but Alexander interrupting him, said, " What is it you say ? Do you think people, if they had received no injury, would come such a journey only to calumniate your father ? " To which when Cassander replied, that their coming so far from the evidence was a great proof of the falseness of their charges, Alexander smiled, and said those were some of Aristotle's sophisms, which would serve equally on both sides ; and added, that both he and his father should be severely punished, if they were found guilty of the least injustice towards those who complained. All which made such a deep im- pression of terror in Cassander's mind, that long after, when he was king of Macedonia, and master of Greece, as he was walking up and down at Delphi, and looking at the statues, at the sight of that of Alexander he was suddenly struck with alarm, and shook all over, his eyes rolled, his head grew dizzy, and it was long before he re- covered himself. When once Alexander had given way to fears of super- natural influence, his mind grew so disturbed and so easily alarmed, that if the least unusual or extraordinary thing happened, he thought it a prodigy or a presage, and his court was thronged with diviners and priests whose busi- ness was to sacrifice and purify and foretell the future. So miserable a thing is incredulity and contempt of divine power on the one hand, and so miserable, also, super- stition on the other, which like water, where the level has been lowered, flowing in and never stopping, fills the mind with slavish fears and follies, as now in Alexander's case. But upon some answers which were brought him from the oracle concerning Hephaastion, he laid aside his sor- row, and fell again to sacrificing and drinking ; and hav- ing given Nearchus a splendid entertainment, after he had bathed, as was his custom, just as he was going to bed, at Medius's request he went to supper with him.