345 



ARISTOPHANES. 



ARISTOTLE. 



There are several prose translations of single plays. Aristophanes is 

 translated into French and German. 



(Rotscher, Aristophanes mid sein Zeital'n- ; eine PldlolofflsJt-PMloi. 

 Abhandlung zur Altcrthum&for&chung. Berlin, 1827.) 



ARISTO'PHANES of Byzantium, the pupil of Callimachus and 

 Zenodotus, the master of Aristarchus, and the founder of the Alex- 

 andrine school of criticism,- was perhaps born about B.C. 240, or some- 

 what later. It is not known at what time he removed to Alexandria, 

 but probably he went there young. (Suidas). The invention of the 

 Greek accents, and the introduction of a system of punctuation are 

 attributed to Aristophanes. He was the first who attempted to arrange 

 the Greek writers into classes, according to the branches on which 

 they wrote, separating those of the highest authority from writers of 

 inferior merit. This canon of classical writers was afterwards cor- 

 rected and confirmed by his pupil Aristarchus. Perhaps we are in- 

 debted to Aristophanes and his more distinguished pupil not only for 

 the purer text, but also for the preservation of many of the best 

 writers, which, if they had not been stamped with their approbation, 

 might have been neglected for those of inferior merit. [ARISTARCHUS.] 



Nothing of Aristophanes remains except what may form a part of 

 the large commentary of Eustathius, the Venice Scholia, &c. (Yilloi.- 

 son, ' Scholia,' 11. i. 298, 424, &c., where Aristophanes' edition of the 

 'Iliad' is referred to.) Aristophanes wrote a work on SiryyeviKd, or 

 ' terms implying relationship ' (Eustath. ' II.' z. p. 648). A mere frag- 

 ment of Aristophanes is printed in Boissonade's 'Eirijutpio-jito! of Herodian, 

 1819, 8vo. 



ARISTOTLE, or, in the Greek form of the name, ARIST6TELES, 

 was born at Stageira (the name, before Aristotle's time, appears to 

 have been Stageirus), a town on the west side of the Strymouic Gulf 

 in Chalcidice, in the first year of the 99th Olympiad, or B.C. 384. 

 Nicomachus, the friend and physician of Amyutas II., king of Mace- 

 donia, and the author of some medical treatises now lost, was his 

 father ; his mother was named Phtestis ; and they both belonged to 

 the race or clan of the Asclepiadae, who were supposed to derive their 

 origin from Asclepios, or -Esoulapiua, the god of healing, and of 

 whose members many practised the medical art. Aristotle lost both 

 his parents at an early period of his life, and after their death he was 

 brought up under the care of Proxenus, a citizen of Atarneus, a city 

 of Mysia in Asia Minor, but who was then settled at Stageira. Aris- 

 totle testified his gratitude to Proxenua and his wife by directing in 

 his will that statues of them, as of his parents, should be set up at 

 his expense : he likewise educated their son Nicanor, ho to whom he 

 gave his daughter Pythias in marriage. 



Bunt of Aristotle, from a statue of the natural size in the Spada Palace at Rome. 



In his eighteenth year (Olymp. ciii. 2, B.C. 367) Aristotle left Stageira 

 and went to Athens, attracted thither doubtless in great part by the 

 fame of the philosopher Plato. It appears however that during the 

 first three years of his residence at Athens, Plato was absent on a visit 

 to Sicily. Although Aristotle paid a particular attention to anatomy 

 and medicine, and may in his youth have practised the healing art, he 

 must from an early age have devoted his whole time to the study of 

 philosophy and the investigation of nature. We are told that his 

 master called him ' the intellect of the school,' and his house ' the 

 house of the reader ; ' that he Raid that Aristotle required the curb, 

 while Xenocrates (a fellow-disciple) required the spur. We are like- 

 wise informed that, when reading, he used to hold a brazen ball in his 

 hand over a basin, in order that, if he fell asleep, he might be awaked 

 by the uoise which it made in falling. Although Aristotle did not, 

 during Plato's life, set up any school in opposition to his master (as 

 some writers have falsely stated), he taught publicly in the art of 



rhetoric, and by this means became the rival of the celebrated Tso- 

 crates, whom he appears (although then at a very advanced age) to 

 have attacked with considerable violence, and to have treated with 

 much contempt. 



Aristotle remained at Athens till Plato's death in B.C. 347, having at 

 that time reached his 37th year. Mauy stories are related respecting 

 an alleged enmity between Plato and Aristotle, but these rumours 

 appear to us to have no other foundation than the known variance 

 between the opinions and mental habits of the two philosophers ; and 

 particularly the opposition which Aristotle made to Plato's character- 

 istic doctrine of ideas : whence probably it was inferred that there must 

 have been an interruption of their friendly relations. In his Nicoma- 

 chean Ethics, which was probably one of his latest works, Aristotle 

 says that "it is painful to him to refute the doctrine of ideas, as it 

 had been introduced by persons who were his friends : nevertheless, 

 that it is his duty to disregard such private feelings ; for both philo- 

 sophers and truth being dear to him, it is right to give the preference 

 to truth." (L 6.) He is said to have erected au altar to his master, 

 inscribing on it that he was a man " whom the wicked ought not 

 even to praise." 



It appears that during Aristotle's first residence at Athens he was 

 employed on an embassy to Philip, to whom he was attached by a 

 double tie, as being both a Macedonian subject and the son of his 

 friend and physician. It is also stated that he was the means of 

 obtaining from Philip some favours for the Athenians. He left 

 Athens about the time of Plato's death, and remained some time at 

 the court of Hermeias, the prince of Atarneus, who had received 

 instruction from him in rhetoric at Athens. When Aristotle had been 

 about three years with this prince, Hermeias was betrayed to Artax- 

 erxes Ochus by Mentor, a Greek general in the Persian service. Artax- 

 erxes put Hermeias to death. In these circumstances Aristotle married 

 Pythias, the sister of Hermeias, and making a rapid flight they took 

 refuge in Mytilene, the chief city of the island of Lesbos (Olymp. 

 cviii. 4, B.C. 345). For the patriotic and philosophic prince, Aristotle 

 had a fervent and sincere affection, and he dedicated to his memory a 

 beautiful poem, still extant, which, on account of the admiration 

 which he expresses in it for the virtues of his lost friend, gave rise 

 at a late period of his life to the absurd charge that he had deified a 

 mortal, and was thus guilty of impiety. His wife Pythias died a few 

 years afterwards in Macedonia, leaving him a daughter of the same 

 name : he then took to his bed a domestic slave named Herpyllis, 

 and by her he had a son, Nicomachus, to whom he addressed his great 

 work on Ethics. 



After two years' stay at Mytilene, Aristotle was (in Olymp. cix. 2, 

 B.C. 342) invited by Philip to Macedonia to superintend the education 

 of his son Alexander, then fourteen years old. There can be no doubt 

 that much of what was admirable in the character of Alexander the 

 Great is attributable to the influence of Aristotle. His love of litera- 

 ture, his veneration of great poets (instanced in his sparing the house 

 of Pindar in the destruction of Thebes, and his destination of the 

 precious casket in the Persian spoils to the works of Homer), his 

 fondness for physical and even medical pursuits, and his intimacy with 

 philosophers, were all doubtless the fruits of Aristotle's instruction, 

 and distinguish him most advantageously from those illiterate and 

 brutal conquerors who have been the scourge of the human race. 

 Lord Bacon, in his ' Advancement of Learning," after citing some of 

 Alexander's wise sayings, adds, that he considers him " not as Alex- 

 ander the Great, but as Aristotle's scholar." Two letters between 

 Alexander and Aristotle are preserved by Plutarch (' Vit. Alex.' c. vii.), 

 and Aulus Gellius (xx. 5), in the first of which Alexander reproaches 

 his master with having made public the treatises which had served for 

 his education, as he wished to surpass other men not less in know- 

 ledge than in power. To this Aristotle replies, that " they have 

 been published and not published : for that they are only intelligible 

 to those who have heard him explain them." Some writers have 

 suspec'ed that these letters are spurious. It is stated that Aristotle 

 advised Alexander to consider all the Greeks as his friends, and all 

 barbarians (or foreigners) as his enemies : a maxim of policy which 

 Alexander unquestionably followed, so far as the direction of his con- 

 quests was concerned, and which agrees remarkably with Aristotle's 

 views as developed in the first part of his ' Politics." It was during 

 his residence with Alexander that Philip re-established his native 

 town, Stageira, which had been demolished in war; in memory of 

 which benefit the Stagirites consecrated a festival, ' Aristotelia,' to 

 their great fellow-citizen, and called a month after his name. 



Alexander probably did not enjoy Aristotle's instruction for more 

 than three or four years : as from his 17th or 18th year his time was 

 almost entirely occupied with public affairs and war. In B.C. 336, 

 when Philip was assassinated, he succeeded to the throne of Macedonia, 

 and two years afterwards he began his expedition Into Asia, when he 

 parted for the last time from his master, who went to Athens, having 

 previously recom'mended to him as a companion in his campaigns a 

 near relation of his own, the philosopher Callisthenes, who had 

 received his instruction with Alexander. Xenocrates had two years 

 before succeeded Speusippus, Plato's nephew, in the academy ; Aris- 

 totle however, on his arrival at Athens, resolved to open a school, 

 and chose a house which from its proximity to the temple of Apollo 

 Lyceius was called the ' Lyceum.' Attached to this building wai n 



