Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men, Vol. 3: John Dryden’s Translation Corrected From the Greek and Revised and Annotated (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men Notwithstanding, he frequently incurred Alexander’s displeasure, and put himself into some danger, through Hephaestion. The quarters that had been taken up for Eumenes, Hephaestion assigned to Euius, the ?ute-player. Upon which, in great anger, Eumenes and Mentor came to Alexander, and loudly complained, saying that the way to be regarded was to throw away their arms, and turn ?ute-players or tragedians; SO much SO that Alexander took their part and chid Hephaestion; but soon after changed his mind again, and was angry with Eumenes, and accounted the freedom he had taken to be rather an affront to the king, than a re?ection upon He phaestion. Afterwards, when N earchus, with a ?eet, was to be sent to the Southern Sea, Alexander borrowed money of his friends, his own treasury being exhausted, and would have had three hundred talents of Eumenes, but he sent a hundred only, pretending that it was not without great difficulty he had raised so much from his stewards. Alexander neither complained nor took the money, but gave private order to set Eumenes’s tent on fire, designing to take him in a manifest lie, when his money was carried out. But before that could be done, the tent was consumed, and Alexander repented of his orders, all his papers being burnt; the gold and silver, however, which was melted down in the fire, being afterwards collected, was found to be more than one thousand talents; yet Alexander took none of it, and only wrote to the several governors and generals to send new copies of the papers that were burnt, and ordered them to be delivered to Eumenes.