ARISTOTLE. 103 



came necessary for the student." And we have another, although 

 slighter, presumptive evidence that the childhood of the great philo- 

 sopher was spent with his father at the Macedonian court, in the 

 circumstance of his being selected by Philip, at a period long sub- 

 sequent, to conduct the education of Alexander. This we shall find 

 an opportunity of reverting to in the sequel. Whatever influence, 

 however, was exercised by Nicomachus over the future fortunes of his 

 son, he had not the happiness of living to be a witness of its effects. 

 He, as well as his wife Pha?stis, a descendant of one of the Chalcidian 

 colonists of Stagirus, died while Aristotle was yet a minor, leaving Becomes an 

 him under the guardianship of Proxenus, a citizen of Atarneus in Asia, 

 who appears to have been settled in the native town of his ward. 

 How long this person continued in the discharge of his trust we have 

 no means of determining ; it was sufficiently long, however, to imbue 

 the object of it with a respect and gratitude which endured throughout 

 life. At the age of seventeen, however, it terminated ; and Aristotle, 

 master of himself and probably of a considerable fortune, came to Comes to 

 Athens, the centre of the civilization of the world, and the focus of l en!> ' 

 everything that was brilliant in action or in thought. It is not pro- 

 bable that anything but the thirst for knowledge which distinguished 

 his residence there was the cause of its commencement. Plato was 

 at that time in the height of his reputation, and the desire to see and 

 enjoy the intercourse of such a man would have been an adequate 

 motive to minds of much less capacity and taste for philosophy than 

 Aristotle's to resort to a spot, where, besides, every enjoyment which 

 even an Epicurean could desire was to be found. 1 It was reserved for Absurd 

 the foolish ingenuity of later times, when all real knowledge of this thereason. 

 period had faded away, to invent the absurd motive of " a Delphic 

 oracle, which commanded him to devote himself to philosophy." 2 For 

 another account, scarcely less absurd, the excuse of ignorance cannot 

 be so easily made. Epicurus, in the work we have before spoken of, Calumny of 

 related that Aristotle, after squandering his paternal property, adopted 

 the profession of a mercenary soldier, and, failing in this, afterwards 

 that of a vender of medicines ; that he then took advantage of the free 

 manner in which Plato's instructions were given to pick up a know- 

 ledge of philosophy, for which he was not without talent, and thus 

 gradually arrived at his views. 3 It is at once manifest that this story Refuted, 

 is incompatible with the account of Apollodorus, according to which 

 Aristotle attached himself to the study of philosophy under Plato 

 before he had completed his eighteenth year. Independently of the 

 difficulty of conceiving that a mere boy should have already passed 

 through so many vicissitudes of fortune, it is obvious that he could 



1 See Xenophon, Rep. Ath. cap. ii. sec. 7, 8. 



2 Pseudo-Ammonius, Vit. Arist. 



8 Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. viii. p. 354 ; Julian, Var. Hist. v. 9. That these two 

 accounts are derived from the same source appears no less from their similarity of 

 phrase than from the remark of Athenaeus, " that Epicurus was the only authority 

 for this story against Aristotle." 



