ARISTOTLE. 117 



own friends, to give a particular explanation of his motives to the 

 marriage. In a letter to Antipater, which is cited by Aristocles, 1 he Marries 

 relates the circumstances which induced him to take this step ; and ^y 1 * 11 * 8 - 

 they are calculated to give us as high an opinion of the goodness of 

 his heart as his works do of the power of his intellect. The calamity 

 which had befallen Hermias would necessarily have entailed utter 

 misery, and in all probability death, upon his adopted daughter, had 

 she been left behind. In this conjuncture, respect for the memory of 

 his murdered friend, and compassion for the defenceless situation of 

 the girl, induced him, knowing her besides, as he says, to be modest 

 and amiable, 2 to take her as his wife. It is a striking proof of the 

 utter want of sentiment in the intercourse between the sexes in 

 Greece, that this noble and generous conduct, as every European will 

 at once confess it to have been, should have drawn down obloquy 

 upon the head of its actor ; while, if he had left the helpless creature 

 to be carried off to a Persian harem, or sacrificed to the lust of a 

 brutal soldiery, not a human being would have breathed the slightest 

 word of censure upon the atrocity. Even his apologists appear to 

 have considered this as one of the most vulnerable points of his cha- 

 racter. When Aristocles 3 discusses the charges which had been made is caiu 

 against him, he dismisses most of them with contempt as carrying the Uqjen 

 marks of falsehood in their very front. "Two, however," he adds, 

 " do appear to have obtained credit, the one that he treated Plato 

 with ingratitude, the other that he married the daughter of Hermias." 

 And, indeed, the relation of Aristotle to the father furnished a subject 

 for many publications 4 in the second and third centuries before Christ, 

 and appears to have excited as much interest among literary anti- 

 quarians of that day, as the question who wrote * Icon Basilike,' or 

 the ' Letters of Junius,' might do in modern times. The treatise of 

 Apellicon of Teos, a wealthy antiquary and bibliomaniac contemporary 

 with Sylla, was regarded as the classical work among them. We 

 shall have occasion, in the sequel, to say something more, about this 

 personage. Aristocles 5 speaks of his book as sufficient to set the 

 whole question at rest, and silence all the calumniators of the philoso- 

 pher for ever. Indeed, if we may judge of the whole of their charges 

 from the few specimens that have come down to us, a further refuta- 

 tion than their own extravagance was hardly needful. The hand of 

 Pythias is there represented as purchased by a fulsome adulation of 

 her adopted father, 6 and a subserviency to the most loathsome vices 

 which human nature in its lowest state of depravity can engender ; 

 and the husband is said, in exultation at his good fortune, to have 

 paid to his father-in-law a service appropriated to the gods alone, 



1 Ap. Euseb. loc cit. 2 aXAa;? ffeutpgova xetl a.ya.&w outra.*. 



8 Ap. Euseb. loc. cit. 4 Aristocles, loc. cit. 5 Ap. Euseb. loc. cit. 

 6 She is m some accounts represented, not as his sister, but as his concubine. 

 Others, not considering him an eunuch, call her his daughter. One, probably to 

 reconcile all accounts, calls her his daughter, jjy KK\ S^ulia.; uv sWe/gsv. (Pseudo- 

 Ammon.) 



