ARISTOTLE. 181 



nicus of Rhodes. Some of the MSS. collated by Bekker mark this 

 division as peculiar to the manuscripts of the Latin arrangement. 

 The Greek one terminated the first book with the end of the ninth 

 chapter, and made our second book the third. Jonsius conjectures 

 that the treatise mentioned by Diogenes in his catalogue, under 

 the title Trtpi <rv/-i/3ou\iae, is the sixth and seventh chapters of the 

 first book of this work. That this work is a different one from that 

 which Aristotle is said to have made over to his scholar Theodectes, 1 

 appears from a passage 2 in which he quotes that treatise. Hence it 

 would seem that, independently of the * Rhetoric to Alexander,' the 

 author of which is uncertain, Aristotle published three distinct works 

 on this subject, which certainly accords with what Cicero says, 3 that 

 the Peripatetics boasted " that Aristotle and Theophrastus not only 

 wrote better, but wrote much more on the subject of oratory than all 

 the professed masters of the science." 



But it seems to us more probable that the work which he cites was 

 one by Theodectes, his own scholar, and that Valerius Maximus 

 mistook for an act of envy what was more probably meant and taken 

 for a flattering encouragement. The first sketch of the ' Rhetoric ' 

 was, as is remarked by Niebuhr, published long before it was worked 

 up into the form we have it in now, and in this interval Theodectes, 

 of whom Cicero speaks as a writer on the subject, probably published 

 his book. It will be observed that Aristotle does not cite the treatise 

 as his own ; but this was overlooked by Valerius, or the authority 

 whom he followed, and the tale we have mentioned above was coined 

 to illustrate the passage. It may also be remarked that the double 

 publication of the ' Rhetoric ' will serve to account for the growth of 

 that story which Dionysius of Halicarnassus takes so much pains to 

 refute. 4 No one could have hazarded such a fiction with all the 

 quotations from Demosthenes under his very eyes. It must have 

 originated with some one who used a copy of the early edition ; while 

 Dionysius in his refutation used the later. 



XXXVII. The Rhetoric to Alexander. (prjro^Kri Trpog 



t This treatise is not mentioned by Diogenes Laertius in his catalogue 

 of Aristotle's works ; and the dedicatory preface at the beginning is a 

 solitary instance, if it be a writing of Aristotle's, of such a proceeding. 

 Quintilian appears to quote it as the production of Anaximenes of 

 Lampsacus, a contemporary of the Stagirite. Neither the style nor 

 the treatment of the subject accords with the character of the last 

 work ; and perhaps what most contributed to procure its ascription to 

 Aristotle is the circumstance that the writer claims the authorship of 

 the ri^vai ry GfoScKrij ypa^eto-ai, which, according to the story of 



1 See above, p. 168, note 2, and compare Cicero, Brut. 64. 



2 P. 1410, col. 2, line 2, ed. Bekker. 



3 De Oratore, i. 10. 



4 See above, p. 168, note 2. 



