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Updated: June 11, 2025
Since I thought it not agreeable to piety to put one of my own people to death, I called to Clitus himself, and said to him, "Since thou deservest to lose both thy hands for thine ingratitude to me, be thou thine own executioner, lest by refusal to do so thou undergo a worse punishment." When he earnestly begged me to spare one of his hands, it was with difficulty that I granted it.
Alexander led the right wing, with a white plume in his helmet, so that all might know him; Parmenio led the left; and it was a grand victory, though not without much hard fighting, hand to hand. Alexander was once in great danger, but was saved by Clitus, the son of his nurse Lanika.
Alexander, burning with rage, commanded Clitus to leave the table. Clitus obeyed, saying, as he moved away, "He is right not to bear freeborn men at his table who can only tell him the truth. He is right. It is fitting for him to pass his life among barbarians and slaves, who will be proud to pay their adoration to his Persian girdle and his splendid robe."
Alexander asked what it was that Clitus said. No one replied. Clitus, however, went on talking, speaking more and more audibly as he became gradually more and more excited. He praised the character of Philip, and applauded his military exploits, saying that they were far superior to any of the enterprises of their day.
It was not till his bodily strength began to fail through protracted abstinence that he at last became more composed, and consented to listen to the consolations of his friends, and the words of the soothsayers, who ascribed the murder of Clitus to a temporary frenzy with which Dionysus had visited him as a punishment for neglecting the celebration of his festival.
Alexander, however, was no sooner released than, snatching a spear, he sprang to the door, and meeting Clitus, who was returning in equal fury to brave his anger, ran him through the body. But when the deed was done he was seized with repentance and remorse.
He is put to the torture. Confession of Philotas. He is stoned to death. Parmenio condemned to death. Mission of Polydamas. Precautions. Brutal murder of Parmenio. Story of Clitus. He saves Alexander's life. Services of Clitus. Occurrences at the banquet. Clitus reproaches Alexander. Alexander's rage. Alexander assassinates Clitus. His remorse. Alexander was now twenty-six years of age.
Not long after this happened the deplorable end of Clitus, which to those who barely hear the matter-of-fact, may seem more inhuman than that of Philotas; but if we consider the story with its circumstance of time, and weigh the cause, we shall find it to have occurred rather through a sort of mischance of the king's, whose anger and over-drinking offered an occasion to the evil genius of Clitus.
They got Clitus out of the apartment, but as soon as he was in the hall he broke away from them, returned by another door, and began to renew his insults to Alexander. The king hurled his javelin and struck Clitus down, saying, at the same time, "Go, then, and join Philip and Parmenio." The company rushed to the rescue of the unhappy man, but it was too late. He died almost immediately.
There was a suspicion that he had been poisoned. His temper had become so unbridled, his passion so ferocious, that his generals and even his intimate friends lived in continual dread. Clitus, one of the latter, he in a moment of fury had stabbed to the heart.
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