108 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



for the talents of his pupil. But it appears that in spite of this there 

 was by no means a perfect congeniality in their feelings. Aristotle is 

 said to have offended his master not only by the carefulness respecting 

 his personal appearance which we have just spoken of, but by a 

 certain sarcastic habit (/uw/cip), 1 which showed itself in the expression 

 of his countenance. It is difficult to imagine that he should have 

 indulged this humour in a greater degree than Socrates is by Plato 

 himself represented to have done. However, a vein of irony which 

 would appear very graceful in the master whom he reverenced, and 

 whose views he enthusiastically embraced, might seem quite the 

 reverse in a youthful pupil who promised speedily to become a rival. 

 His reputed An anecdote is related by ^Elian, 2 from which we should infer that 

 to g Pkto" de overt hostility broke out between them. Aristotle, it is said, taking 

 advantage of the absence of Xenocrates from Athens, and of the tem- 

 porary confinement of Speusippus by illness, attacked Plato in the 

 presence of his disciples with a series of subtle sophisms which, his 

 powers being impaired by extreme old age, had the effect of per- 

 plexing him and obliging him to retire in confusion and shame from 

 the walks of the Academy. Xenocrates, however, returning three 

 months after, drove Aristotle away, and restored his master to his 

 old haunts. On this or some other occasion it is said that Plato com- 

 pared his pupil's conduct to that of the young foals who kick at their 

 dam as soon as dropped. 3 And the opinion that Aristotle had in 

 some way or other behaved with ingratitude to his master certainly 

 had obtained considerable currency in antiquity; but it is probable 

 that this, in a great measure, arose from the false interpretation of a 

 passage in the biography of Plato by Aristoxenus the musician, whom 

 we have noticed in the early part of this essay. 4 This writer had 

 related that " while Plato was absent from Athens on his travels, 

 certain individuals, who were foreigners, established a school in oppo- 

 sition to him." " Some," adds Aristocles, the Peripatetic philo- 

 sopher, 5 after quoting this passage, " have imagined that Aristotle 

 was the person here alluded to, but they forget that Aristoxenus, 

 throughout the whole of his work, speaks of Aristotle in terms of 

 praise." Every one who is conversant with the productive power of 

 Greek imagination, and the rapidity with which anecdotes in that 

 fertile soil sprang up and assumed a more and more circumstantial 



i .Elian, loc. cit. 2 Ibid. 8 .Elian, Var. Hist. iv. 9. 4 Page 96. 



5 Ap. Eusebium, Praeparatio Evangelica, xv. 2. Aristocles, a native of Messina, 

 was the preceptor of the virtuous emperor, Alexander Severus, not of Alexander 

 Aphrodisiensis, and consequently lived in the first half of the third century of the 

 Christian era. The work from which Eusebius extracts a passage of some length, 

 relating to Aristotle, was a kind of History of Philosophy, in ten books. Eusebius's 

 extract is a part of the seventh. The learning and discrimination of the writer are 

 very great. He traces the stories which he has occasion to mention up to their 

 earliest origin, and refutes them in a masterly manner. There is a literary notice 

 of him in Fabricius's Bibliotheca Grseca, iii. c. viii., where see Heumann's note. 

 It is curious that in the Latin Life Aristocles is cited, together with Aristoxenus, 

 as an authority for the very story which he is concerned to refute. 



