22 
MEMOIR OP ARISTOTLE. 
mother, whose name was Pluestis, some have traced 
to the same illustrious origin as her husband ; but 
whatever was her extraction, her acknowledged 
country was Euboea, or Chalcidica, her father, as 
Dionysius Halicarnassus asserts, being one of the 
colony which was sent from Chalcis to Stagira * 
It was the misfortune of Aristotle to lose his parents 
at a very early age, a fact that Dr Reid seems to 
have overlooked when he mentions his being brought 
up at the Court of Macedon, as among the “ many 
uncommon advantages” which he enjoyed. At what 
precise period that event happened, or what pro- 
gress he had then made in his education, it is now 
Impossible to ascertain ; but, as one of his modem 
oiographers has remarked, it is an agreeable, and 
not altogether an unwarranted, conjecture, that his 
father had inspired him with a taste for his own pro- 
fession, and especially with that ardent love for the 
study of Nature, which made him long be regarded 
as her best and chosen interpreter ; while from his 
mother he imbibed that attic elegance and purity 
which everywhere pervades his writings. His gra- 
titude and affection to her he displayed, by causing 
her picture to be drawn by Protogenes, an eminent 
painter of that time, which Pliny reckoned as among 
the choicest pieces of that master. 
The early loss of his parents was supplied and 
compensated by the kind attentions of Proxenus, a 
“ It appears from Laertius, that Aristotle had two bro- 
thers, Arimnestus and Arimnestes, and a sister called 
Hero. 
