ARISTOTLE. 127 



forwards/ 1 From a neighbouring temple of Apollo Lyceus, his school 

 was commonly known by the name of the Lyceum ;* and here every 

 morning and evening he delivered lectures to a numerous body of 

 scholars. Among these he appears to have made a division. The Division of 

 morning course, or, as he called it from the place where it was deli- his scholars - 

 vered, the morning walk (twOtvoc Trep'nraros), was attended only by 

 the more highly-disciplined part of his auditory, the subjects of.it be- 

 longing to the higher branches of philosophy, and requiring a system- 

 atic attention as well as a previously-cultivated understanding on the 

 part of the scholar. In the evening course (htXtroQ TrepiiraTOQ) the 

 subjects as well as the manner of treating them were of a more popular 

 cast, and more appreciable by a mixed assembly. Aulus Gellius, 3 who 

 is our sole authority on this matter, affirms that the expressions acroatic 

 discourses and exoteric discourses (\oyot aKpwariKol and Xoyoi t^wTepiKol) 

 were the appropriate technical terms for these instructions : and he 

 further says that the former comprised theological, physical, and dia- 

 lectic investigations ; the latter rhetoric, sophistic (or the art of disput- 

 ing), and politics. We shall in another place examine thoroughly into 

 the precise meaning of these celebrated phrases, a task which would 

 in this place too much break the thread of the narrative. We may, 

 however, remark that the morning discourses were called acroatic or 

 subjects of lectures, not because they belonged to this or that branch, 

 but because they were treated in a technical and systematic manner ; 

 and so the evening discourses obtained the name of exoteric or separate, 

 because each of them was insulated, and not forming an integral part 

 of a system. It is obvious that some subjects are more suitable to the 

 one of these methods, and others to the other ; and the division which 

 Gellius makes is, generally speaking, a good one. But that it does 

 not hold universally is plain, not to mention other arguments, from 

 the fact that the work on ' Rhetoric* which has come down to us is an 

 acroatic work, and that on * Polities' the unfinished draught of one ; 

 while, on the contrary, a fragment of an exoteric work preserved by 

 Cicero in a Latin dress is upon a theological subject. 



The more select circle of his scholars Aristotle used to assemble at Their con- 

 stated times on a footing, which without any straining of analogy we J^ vl s aI meet " 

 may compare to the periodical dinners held by some of the literary 

 clubs of modern times. Their object obviously was to combine the 

 advantages of high intellectual cultivation with the charms of social 

 intercourse ; to make men feel that philosophy was not a thing separate 

 from the daily uses of life, but entered into all its charities, and was 

 mixed up with its real pleasures. These reunions were conducted 



1 Cicero, Academ. Post. i. 4. Cicero translates the word rspvar&iv by inambu- 

 lare. Hermippus explained it by avaxa^TTs/v. Diogenes Laertius (v. 2) attri- 

 butes the origin of this practice with Aristotle to a regard, not for his own health, 

 but for that of Alexander. 



2 Before the Peloponnesian War it had been used as a gymnasium, and was said 

 to have been built by Pisistratus. See Aristoph. Pac. 355, and the Scholiast. 



3 Noct. Att. xx. 5. 



