114 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



whether a man speak them as ancient or make them his own." 

 Proverbs are the apophthegms of a people ; and from this point of 

 view Aristotle appears to have formed his estimate of their import- 

 ance. He is said to have regarded them as exhibiting in a compressed 

 form the wisdom of the age in which they severally sprang up ; and, 

 as in many instances, having been preserved by their compactness and 

 pregnancy through vicissitudes which had swept away all other 1 traces 

 of the people which originated them. 1 



Aristotle at We now pass to another stage in the life 'of Aristotle. After 

 Hernia?. & twenty years' stay at Athens, he, accompanied by the Platonic- 

 34 7' 345 4 P^^ os P^ er Xenocrates, passed over into Asia Minor, and took up his 

 ' residence at Atarneus or Assos (for the accounts vary), in Mysia, at 

 the court of Hermias. 2 Of the motives which impelled him to this 

 step we have, as is natural, very conflicting accounts. His enemies 

 imputed it to a feeling of jealousy, arising from Speusippus having 

 been appointed by Plato, who had died just before, as his successor in 

 the school of the Academy. 3 Others attributed it to a yet more vulgar 

 motive, a taste for the coarse sensualities and ostentatious luxury of 

 an oriental court.* But the first of these reasons will seem to deserve 

 but little credit when we consider that the position which Plato had 

 held was not recognised in any public manner ; that there was neither 

 endowment nor dignity attached to it ; that all honour or profit 

 arising from it was due solely to the personal merits of the philoso- 

 pher ; that in all probability Aristotle himself had occupied a similar 

 position before the death of Plato ; and that, if he felt himself injured 

 by the selection of Speusippus (Plato's nephew), he had every oppor- 

 tunity of showing by the best of all tests, competition, how erroneous 

 a judgment had been formed of their respective merits. And with 

 regard to the second view, it will be sufficient to remark, that for the 

 twenty years preceding this epoch, as well as afterwards, he possessed 

 the option of living at the court of Macedonia, where he probably had 

 connexions, and where there was equal scope for indulging the tastes 

 in question. We shall, therefore, feel no scruple in referring this 

 journey to other and more adequate causes. The reader of Grecian 



1 Synesius, Encom. Calvitii, p. 59, ed. Turneb. 



fi Strabo, xiii. p. 126, ed. Tauchnitz. Diodorus Siculus, xvi. 53. 



3 .Elian, Var. Hist. iii. 19. Eubulides (ap. Aristocl. Euseb. Prsep. Ev. xv. 2) 

 alleged that Aristotle refused to be present at Plato's deathbed. 



4 To this the epigram of Theocritus of Chios (ap. Aristocl. loc. cit.) perhaps 

 alludes : 



'Egpiott ilvov-^ov <rt xcu 'EufiouXou TO$I "bofaoti 

 MVWJAK xivov xtvotpeav SWK&V ' A0iff-TOT&%.ns' 



Of OlK TYIV KX^OiTn yOLffTQOf fyvfflV tiXlTO VCllllV 



'Ayr' ' Aimlnf&sias flogfiogou Iv vrgoxaeuf. 



although Plutarch applies it to his residence in Macedonia. The cenotaph spoken 

 of in the second line is probably the foundation for the " altar " to Plato, of which 

 the latter writers speak. Theocritus of Chios was a contemporary of Aristotle. 

 The Syracusan poet of the same name, in an epigram ascribed to him, protests 

 against being identified with him. 



