34 
MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 
even from his boyhood, had given symptoms of those 
extraordinary talents which have made his actions as 
a conqueror so familiar to posterity. It has been al- 
leged, on the authority of Laertius, that, while a stu- 
dent at the Academy, he had been sent by the 
Athenians on an embassy to Philip, to implore his 
forbearance in behalf of the Grecian cities, which he 
then threatened to subject to the yoke of his military 
despotism ; and that, having succeeded in his mis- 
sion, his grateful fellow-citizens decreed his statue 
to be placed in the Acropolis, as a benefactor to the 
Republic. It is more than probable, however, that 
these statements have arisen from a slight anachronism, 
and that the Athenians had used his influence with 
Philip to spare their freedom, not before but after 
he had become an inmate of his family. This cir- 
cumstance may have occasioned the erection of a 
statue to his memory, in remembrance of the services 
which he then rendered the State. 
It was in the fifth year of his father’s reign that 
Alexander was born. Several tutors or preceptors 
had been employed in training his infant mind, at 
the head of whom was Leonidas, a kinsman of the 
queen. But Philip early perceived, that the educa- 
tion of his son was a matter of too great importance 
to be entrusted to ordinary masters. Music, dan- 
cing, and such-like accomplishments, he found to be 
unsuitable to his genius, which, as Sophocles has 
said, required 
“ The rudder’s guidance, and the curb’s restraint.” 
