Alexander

And the last, asked how long it were well for a man to live, answered: Until he does not regard death as better than life. So, then, turning to the judge, Alexander bade him give his opinion. The judge declared that they had answered one worse than another. Well, then, said Alexander, thou shalt die first for giving such a verdict. That cannot be, O King, said the judge, unless thou falsely saidst that thou wouldst put to death first him who answered worst.

These philosophers, then, he dismissed with gifts; but to those who were in the highest repute and lived quietly by themselves he sent Onesicritus, asking them to pay him a visit. Now, Onesicritus was a philosopher of the school of Diogenes the Cynic.

And he tells us that Calanus very harshly and insolently bade him strip off his tunic and listen naked to what he had to say, otherwise he would not converse with him, not even if he came from Zeus; but he says that Dandamis was gentler, and that after hearing fully about Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes, he remarked that the men appeared to him to have been of good natural parts but to have passed their lives in too much awe of the laws.

Others, however, say that the only words uttered by Dandamis were these: Why did Alexander make such a long journey hither? Calanus, nevertheless, was persuaded by Taxiles to pay a visit to Alexander. His real name was Sphines, but because he greeted those whom he met with Cale, the Indian word of salutation, the Greeks called him Calanus. It was Calanus, as we are told, who laid before Alexander the famous illustration of government. It was this.