Cleitus the Black
Kleitos ho Melas
Son of Dropides of Pella, brother of Alexander's wet-nurse Lanice; commander of the royal squadron of the Companion cavalry. At Granicus in 334 BC he severed the arm of the Persian Spithridates as the sword was about to come down on Alexander's unhelmeted head, saving his life (Arr. *Anab.* 1.15.7–8; Plut. *Alex.* 16.10–11 — the helmet-plume already struck off by Rhoisaces in the previous exchange). Eight years later, in autumn 328 at Maracanda in Sogdiana, the two men quarrelled at a drunken banquet over the orientalising direction of Alexander's court — Cleitus contrasting Philip's old Macedonian plain-dealing with the new Persian obeisance — and Alexander, snatching a spear from one of the guards, ran him through in the hall (Arr. 4.8–9 + Plut. *Alex.* 50–52). The episode became one of the canonical Hellenistic exempla of the corruption of power.