To the literary Greeks who accompanied Alexander, this change in his temper must have been especially palpable and full of serious consequence; since it was chiefly manifested, not at periods of active military duty, but at his hours of leisure, when he recreated himself by their conversation and discourses. Several of these Greeks—Anaxarchus, Kleon, the poet Agis of Argos—accommodated themselves to the change, and wound up their flatteries to the pitch required. Kallisthenes could not do so. He was a man of sedate character, of simple, severe, and almost unsocial habits—to whose sobriety the long Macedonian potations were distasteful. Aristotle said of him, that he was a great and powerful speaker, but that he had no judgment; according to other reports, he was a vain and arrogant man, who boasted that Alexander’s reputation and immortality were dependent on the composition and tone of _his_ history.[518] Of personal vanity,—a common quality among literary Greeks,—Kallisthenes probably had his full share. But there is no ground for believing that _his_ character had altered. Whatever his vanity may have been, it had given no offence to Alexander during the earlier years, nor would it have given offence now, had not Alexander himself become a different man. [518] Arrian, iv. 10, 2; Plutarch, Alex. 53, 54. It is remarkable that Timmæus denounced Kallisthenes as having in his historical work flattered Alexander to excess (Polybius, xii. 12). Kallisthenes seems to have recognized various special interpositions of the gods, to aid Alexander’s successes—see Fragments 25 and 36 of the Fragmenta Callisthenis in the edition of Didot. In reading the censure which Arrian passes on the arrogant pretensions of Kallisthenes, we ought at the same time to read the pretensions raised by Arrian on his own behalf as an historian (i. 12, 7-9)—καὶ ἐπὶ τῷδε οὐκ ἀπαξιῶ ἐμαυτὸν τῶν πρώτων ἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῇ Ἑλλάδι, εἴπερ καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, etc. I doubt much whether Kallisthenes pitched his self-estimation so high. In this chapter, Arrian recounts, that Alexander envied Achilles for having been fortunate enough to obtain such a poet as Homer for panegyrist; and Arrian laments that Alexander had not, as yet, found an historian equal to his deserts. This, in point of fact, is a reassertion of the same truth which Kallisthenes stands condemned for asserting—that the fame even of the greatest warrior depends upon his commemorators. The boastfulness of a poet is at least pardonable, when he exclaims, like Theokritus, Idyll. xvi. 73— Ἔσσεται οὗτος ἀνὴρ, ὃς ἐμεῦ κεχρήσετ᾽ ἀοιδοῦ, Ῥέξας ἢ Ἀχιλεὺς ὅσσον μέγας, ἢ βαρὺς Αἴας Ἐν πεδίῳ Σιμόεντος, ὅθι Φρυγὸς ἠρίον ῎Ιλου.