132 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



Aristotle 

 retires to 

 Chalcis in 

 Euboea. 

 B. c. 322. 



have presented his master with the sum of eight hundred talents (about 

 two hundred thousand pounds sterling) towards the expenses of his 

 * History of Animals," and enormous as this sum is, it is only in pro- 

 portion to the accounts we have of the vast wealth acquired by the 

 plunder of the Persian treasures. 8 Pliny also relates that some thou- 

 sands of men were placed at his disposal for the purpose of procuring 

 zoological specimens, which served as materials for this celebrated 

 treatise. The undertaking, he says, originated in the express desire of 

 Alexander, who took a singular interest in the study of natural 

 history. 3 For this particular object, indeed, he is said to have received 

 a considerable sum from Philip, so that we must probably regard the 

 assistance afforded him by Alexander (no doubt after conquest had 

 enlarged his means) as having effected the extension and completion 

 of a work begun at an earlier period, previous to his second visit to 

 Athens. 4 Independently, too, of this princely liberality, the profits of 

 his occupation may have been very great, 5 and we have before seen 

 reason to suppose that his private fortune was not inconsiderable. It 

 is likely, therefore, that not only all the means and appliances of know- 

 ledge, but the luxuries and refinements of private life, were within his 

 reach, and having as little of the cynic as of the sensualist in his 

 character, there is every probability that he availed himself of them. 

 Indeed, the charges of luxury which his enemies brought against him 

 after his death, absurd as they are in the form in which they were put, 

 appear to indicate a man that could enjoy riches when possessing them, 

 as well as in case of necessity he could endure poverty. 



But fortune, proverbially inconstant, was even more fickle in the 

 days of Aristotle than our own. At an earlier period of his life, we 

 have seen the virulence of political partizanship rendering it desirable 

 for him to quit Athens. The same spirit it was which again, in his 

 old age, forced him to seek refuge in a less agreeable but safer spot. 

 The death of Alexander had infused new courage into the anti-Mace- 

 donian party at Athens, and a persecution of such as entertained con- 

 trary views naturally followed. Against Aristotle, the intimate friend 

 and correspondent of Antipater (whom Alexander on leaving Greece 

 had left regent), a prosecution was either instituted or threatened for 

 an alleged offence against religion. 6 The flimsiness of this pretext for 



Athenseus, p. 338, e. 



See the authorities on this subject collected by Ste. Croix. Examen Historique, 

 pp 428430. 



" Hist. Nat. viii. 17. 



-Elian, Var. Hist. iv. 19. 



See the beginning of the Hippias Major of Plato for the profits of the sophists, 

 which there is no reason to suppose were greater than those of their more respect- 

 able successors. Hippias professes to have made, during a short circuit in Sicily, 

 more than six hundred pounds, although the celebrated Protagoras was there as a 

 competitor (sec. 5). Hyperbolus's instructions in oratory cost him a talent, or two 

 hundred and fifty pounds. (Aristoph. Nub. 874.) But there is no means of de- 

 ciding whether Aristotle's teaching was or was not gratuitous. 



6 Phavorinus, ap.Diog. Laert. Vit. sec. 5; ^Elian, Var. Hist. iii. 36; Athenseus, 



