ARISTOTLE. 145 



the intimate friendship which subsisted between Aristotle and An- 

 tipater, and also of the rumour that Alexander had been poisoned 

 through the agency of the latter, had either chanced to stumble him- 

 self, or to be directed by a more learned visitor to a passage in a work 

 of Theophrastus (Aristotle's favourite scholar and successor), at that 

 time extant, which stated " that in Arcadia there was a streamlet of 

 water dropping from a rock, called the water of Styx, which those who 

 wished for, collected by means of sponges fastened to the end of poles; 

 and that not only was it a mortal poison to whoever drank it, but it 

 possessed the property of dissolving all vessels into which it was put, 

 except they were of horn^ 1 he must have possessed much less fancy, 

 and a much greater regard for historical accuracy than the rest of his 

 countrymen, if he did not, when the next pilgrim visited the temple, 

 add at least a conjecture or two as to the connexion which the relic in 

 question had with a story possessing so much interest to all. It should 

 not be forgotten, in reference to that part of the account which repre- 

 sents Aristotle as the discoverer of this peculiar property of the " Stygian 

 water " that Theophrastus is the earliest authority for its possessing 

 it, and that if Aristotle had been aware that such a belief existed, we 

 should hardly fail to find it in the book Trepl Qavpaaiujv ajcoucr/jarwv, 

 in the 121st chapter of which there is an account of a pestilential 

 fountain in Thrace, the water of which was said to be clear and spark- 

 ling, and to the eye like any other, but fatal to all who drank of it. 



We must now return from the discussion of the imputed share of Death of 

 Aristotle in the death of his illustrious pupil, to the narrative of his Anstotle - 

 own. He did not long survive his departure from the city in which 

 he had spent so large a portion of his life. He retired to Chalcis in 

 the year of Cephisodorus's archonship (B.C. 323-322), and early in 

 that of his successor Philocles died (as we are justified by Apollo- 

 dorus's authority in stating positively 2 ) from disease. At nearly the 

 same time the greatest orator that the world ever saw, the leader of 

 that party whose influence had expelled Aristotle from Athens, was 

 driven to have recourse to poison to escape a worse fate. There are 

 not wanting accounts that the philosopher also met a violent death. 

 That he poisoned himself to avoid falling into the hands of his various 

 accusers is the view of Suidas and the anonymous author of his Life. 3 accounts - 



monarchs terminated with a reference to one of these temples. The historians 

 before him, with, perhaps, the exception of Hellanicus, made use even of the topo- 

 graphical form of composition. 



1 Theophrastus, ap. Antigonum Carystium, Hist. Mirab. sec. 174. Pausanias, 

 where he describes the water and its singular effects, speaks of the story of Alex- 

 ander having been destroyed by it as one which he had heard, but not as if it had 

 been told him at the place. Beckmann (ap. Antig. Caryst. loc, cit.) supposes that 

 a part of the legend is due to the fact that the water contained a volatile acid which 

 exercised a corrosive effect upon metallic cups. 



2 Ap. Diog. Vit. sec. 10, and Dionys. Hal. Ep. Amm. p. 728. 



3 They appear to follow one Eumelus, whom Diogenes (Vit. Arist. sec. 6) cites 

 and contradicts. He related that Aristotle died by drinking hemlock, at the age 

 of seventy, and had become a pupil of Plato at that of thirty. See p. 104. 



[G. R. P.] L 



