[53]
Shall we say that
Xenophon is either a liar or a madman?
"And Aristotle, who was endowed with a matchless and almost godlike intellect,—is he in error, or
is he trying to lead others into error in the following
account of his friend, Eudemus1 the Cyprian?
Eudemus, while on his way to Macedonia, reached
Pherae, then a very famous city of Thessaly, but
groaning under the cruel sway of the tyrant, Alexander.2 There he became so violently ill that the
physicians despaired of his recovery. While sick
he had a dream in which a youth of striking beauty
told him that he would speedily get well; that the
[p. 283]
despot Alexander would die in a few days, and that
he himself would return home five years later. And
so, indeed, the first two prophecies, as Aristotle
writes, were immediately fulfilled by the recovery
of Eudemus and by the death of the tyrant at the
hands of his wife's brothers. But at the end of
five years, when, in reliance upon the dream, he
hoped to return to Cyprus from Sicily, he was killed
in battle before Syracuse. Accordingly the dream
was interpreted to mean that when his soul left
the body it then had returned home.
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