ARISTOTLE. 153 



and upon all subjects, are woven ingeniously into the conversation of 

 the guests. Nearly in the beginning of the work, the author, who 

 himself is one of them, enlarges on the splendid munificence, the 

 literary taste, and the accomplishments of the host. Among other 

 things he praises the extent and value of his library. " It was of such 

 a size," he says, "as to exceed those of all who had gained a reputa- 

 tion as book-collectors, Polycrates the Samian, Pisistratus the tyrant of 

 Athens, Euclid (also an Athenian), Nicocrates of Cyprus, ay, the kings 

 of Pergamus too, and Euripides the poet, and Aristotle the philosopher, 

 [and Theophrastus], and him who had (^tarripriaavTa) the books of 

 these, from whom king Ptolemy my countryman, surnamed Philadel- 

 phus, bought the whole, and carried them away, together with those he 

 got from Athens and those from Rhodes, to the fair city of Alexandria." 

 It is obvious that the author here follows an account very different from 

 Strabo's, one which represented Neleus's library including the costly col- Incom- 

 lections of Aristotle and Theophrastus as forming, together with some sS2JJjg Wlt 

 others, the basis of the famous collection at Alexandria. Now it is utterly 

 inconceivable that if Ptolemy bought the whole library of Neleus, he 

 should have been satisfied to leave the works of Aristotle and Theo- 

 phrastus only behind in the hands of men so ignorant of their value, 

 and careless of what became of them as Neleus's heirs are represented 

 to have been, if no other copies of these works existed ; and even 

 supposing it possible that he should have done so, would not so sin- 

 gular an incident of literary history have been mentioned by some 

 author of antiquity ? Should we not find some record of it in Cicero, silence of 

 from whom we learn so much of the history of Greek philosophy ? Clcero - 

 He even mentions the degeneracy of the Peripatetic school after Theo- 

 phrastus in strong terms :' is it conceivable that if it had been attri- 

 butable to the want of their founders' works, he should either have 

 not heard of this, or should not think it worth mentioning ? Could 

 such a story have escaped the anecdote collectors under the empire, 

 JElian, Phavorinus, and a host of others? Would Diogenes Laertius, 

 who relates how many cooking utensils Aristotle passed at the Eubcean 

 custom-house, have neglected so interesting an anecdote as this ? Such 

 considerations, combined with the notice in Athenasus, must prevent 

 an impartial judge from attaching more than a very small degree of 

 credit to that part of Strabo's narrative, which denies the publication 

 of the works of Aristotle to any considerable extent before the time of 

 Sylla. And this scepticism will not be diminished when we consider, 

 that the greater part of Aristotle's works are so closely connected with close con- 

 each other that if any were published all or nearly all must have been ^sSie^ 

 so. He continually refers from the one to the other for investigations works. 



1 De Finibus, v. 5. " Simus igitur contenti his [. e. Aristotele et Theophrasto] 

 namque horum posteri, meliores illi quidem med sententid quam reliquarum phi- 

 losophi disciplinarum ; sed ita degenerarunt, ut ipsi ex se nati esse videantur." It 

 is strange that the words in italic characters should not have opened the eyes of men 

 to look for a general cause of a general deterioration. Could they suppose that all 

 the schools had lost all their books ? 



