ARISTOTLE. 105 



put to death in the archonship of Laches (B.C. 400-399), that is, 

 fifteen years before the birth of Aristotle. But it has been ingeni- 

 ously remarked, 1 that at the time when Aristotle first came to Athens, 

 Plato was absent in Sicily, from whence he did not return till Olymp. 

 ciii. 4, the third year afterwards ; 2 so that if Aristotle was then intro- 

 duced to the philosophy of the Academy, it must have been under 

 the auspices of some other of the Socratic school, whom the foolish 

 compilers of later times mistook for its founder. Under this natural 

 explanation, the absurd story becomes a confirmation of the account 

 of Apollodorus, which we have followed a coincidence the more 

 satisfactory as it is quite undesigned. 



We shall now proceed, as* well as the scanty information which has Aristotle at 

 come down to us will allow, to sketch the course of Aristotle's life 

 during the ensuing period of nearly twenty years which he spent at 

 Athens. It appears to have been mainly, although not entirely, 

 occupied in the acquisition of his almost encyclopaedic knowledge, in 

 collecting, criticising, and digesting. Of his extraordinary diligence His industry. 

 in mastering the doctrines of the earlier schools of philosophy we may 

 form some notion from the notices of them which are preserved in his 

 works, which indeed constitute the principal source of our whole 

 knowledge upon this subject. That this information should have 

 been acquired by him during this part of his life is rendered likely 

 both by the nature of the case and by the scattered anecdotes which 

 relate that his remarkable industry and intelligence elicited the 

 strongest expressions of admiration from Plato, who is said by Pseudo- 

 Ammonius to have called Aristotle's house " the house of the reader" 

 The Latin translator adds, that in his absence his master would ex- 

 claim, " that the intelligence of the school was away, and his 

 audience but a deaf one !" 3 A treatise on Rhetoric, not that which works of 

 has come down to us, but one which, as we shall have occasion to this time> 

 show in the sequel, was probably written during this period of his 

 life, is described by Cicero 4 as containing an account of the theories of 

 all his predecessors upon this subject, from the time of Tisias, the 

 first who wrote upon it, so admirably and perspicuously set forth, 

 that all persons in his time who wished to gain a knowledge of them, 

 preferred Aristotle's description to their own. We may take occasion 



1 Stahr, Aristotelia, i. p. 43. 



2 Corsini (De die n. Platonis) cited by Ast. Platons Leben und Schriften, p. 30. 

 Heraclides of Pontus presided in the school of Plato during his absence. But 

 Xenocrates, who is known to have been an intimate associate of Aristotle in after 

 life, may possibly have been the means of drawing his attention to intellectual phi- 

 losophy; the social intercourse in which this might be effected would to later ages 

 appear in the light of formal instruction, and, when this was the case, the name 

 Xenocrates would readily, by the carelessness or meddling criticism of a transcriber, 

 be altered into Socrates. 



3 " Intellectus ab est; surdum est auditorium." This story is probably only an 

 expansion of a saying of Plato's, recorded by Philoponus (De ^Eternitate, Mundi, vi. 

 27), that Aristotle was "the soul of his school" (o vov; <rws 



4 De Oratore, ii. 38, compared with De Inventione, ii. 2. 



