ARISTOTLE. 149 



sons named Procles and Demaratus, scholars of Theophrastus ; and, 

 thirdly, to Metrodorus, an eminent physician, to whom she bore a 

 son named after his maternal grandfather. 1 He also left behind him 

 an infant son, named after his paternal grandfather, Nicomachus, by a 

 female of the name of Herpyllis, of whom it is very difficult exactly 

 to say in what relation she stood to him. To call her his mistress 

 would imply a licentious description of intercourse which the name by 

 which she is described (vraXXajc?)) by no means warrants us in sup- 

 posing, and which the character of Aristotle, the absence of any allusion 

 to such a circumstance in the numerous calumnies which were heaped 

 upon him, and the terms of respect in which she is spoken of in his 

 will, 2 would equally incline us to disbelieve. It seems most probable 

 that he was married to her by that kind of left-handed marriage which 

 alone the laws of Greece and Rome permitted between persons who 

 were not both citizens of the same state. The Latin technical term 

 for the female in this relation was concubina. She was recognised by 

 the law, and her children could inherit the sixth part of their father's 

 property. Mark Antony lived in this kind of concubinage with 

 Cleopatra, and Titus with Berenice. The two Antonines, men of 

 characters the most opposite to licentiousness, were also instances of 

 this practice, which indeed remained for some time after Christianity 

 became the religion of the state, and was regulated by two Christian 

 emperors, Constantine and Justinian. 3 The Greek term is not used 

 so strictly in a technical sense, and may be said to answer with equal 

 propriety to either of the Latin words pellex and concubina. Where, 

 however, the legal relation was denoted, there was no other word 

 selected in preference ;* and we may safely say that this, in the case 



1 Stahr. Aristotelia, p. 164. 



4 He provides amply for her, and enjoins his executors, if she should desire to 

 marry, to take care that she is not disposed of in a way unworthy of him, remind- 

 ing them, that she has deserved well of him (fcrt ffirovSaia -rrepl e//,e fyeyero). 

 Diog. Laert. sec. 13. 



3 Taylor, Elements of the Civil Law, p. 273. The terms " semi-matrimonium " 

 and " conjugium inaaquale" were applied to this connexion, which was entered into 

 before witnesses ("testatione interposita ") and with the consent of the father of 

 the woman. Both contracting parties, too, were obliged to be single. See Gibbon, 

 vol. v. c. xliv. pp. 368-370. 



4 The author of the oration against Neaera thus uses it in the distinction which he 

 draws (p. 1386), ras juei/ yap fraipas ^Soi/fjs eVe/ca exo/xez/, TO.S Se 7roA\a/cas 

 TTJS /ca0' T)/j.fpav Oepcnrsias rov ffd/JLaros, TU.S 8e yvva'iKas TOV TraiSoTroteTo'flcu 

 yvyfficas Kal TUV ei/Soj/ tyvXaica TTKTT^V ex* iu - It must not be concealed that 

 Athenaeus, p. 589 (and perhaps Hermippus, whom he quotes), called Herpyllis by 

 the term erdipa. But possibly the word eratpa was used by him in that sense 

 which Athenseus (p. 571, c.) speaks of. And even if Herpyllis had been originally 

 an adventurer of the same description as Aspasia, we shall not necessarily think the 

 worse of Pericles for marrying the latter, or Aristotle the former, when we con- 

 sider that everything which elevates marriage above a faithful intercourse of this 

 kind is due to the religious sanction and the religious meaning which it derives 

 from Christianity. In Paganism the superiority of the one to the other was purely 

 legal and conventional. The wife was the housekeeper and the breeder of citizens, 

 and nothing whatever more. 



