The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
I. Clitomachus was a Carthaginian. He was called Asdrubal, and used to
lecture on philosophy in his own country in his native language.
II. But when he came to Athens, at the age of forty years, he became
a pupil of Carneades; and, as he was pleased with his industry, he
caused him to be instructed in literature, and himself educated the
man carefully. And he carried his diligence to such a degree, that he
composed more than four hundred books.
III. And he succeeded Carneades in his schools; and he illustrated his
principles a great deal by his writings; as he himself had studied the
doctrines of their sects, the Academic, the Peripatetic, and the Stoic.
Timon attacks the whole school of Academics, as a body, in these lines:—
Nor the unprofitable chattering
Of all the Academics.
But now that we have gone through the philosophers of Plato’s school, let
us go to the Peripatetics, who also derived their doctrines from Plato;
and the founder of their sect was Aristotle.
BOOK V.
LIFE OF ARISTOTLE.
I. Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus and Phæstias, a citizen of
Stagira; and Nicomachus was descended from Nicomachus, the son of
Machaon, the son of Æsculapius, as Hermippus tells us in his treatise on
Aristotle; and he lived with Amyntas, the king of the Macedonians, as
both a physician and a friend.
II. He was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato; he had a lisping
voice, as is asserted by Timotheus the Athenian, in his work on Lives.
He had also very thin legs, they say, and small eyes; but he used to
indulge in very conspicuous dress, and rings, and used to dress his hair
carefully.
III. He had also a son named Nicomachus, by Herpyllis his concubine, as
we are told by Timotheus.
IV. He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell
a story that he said, “Aristotle has kicked us off just as chickens do
their mother after they have been hatched.” But Hermippus says in his
Lives, that while he was absent on an embassy to Philip, on behalf of the
Athenians, Xenocrates became the president of the school in the Academy;
and that when he returned and saw the school under the presidency of some
one else, he selected a promenade in the Lyceum, in which he used to walk
up and down with his disciples, discussing subjects of philosophy till
the time for anointing themselves came; on which account he was called
a Peripatetic.[44] But others say that he got this name because once
when Alexander was walking about after recovering from a sickness, he
accompanied him and kept conversing with him. But when his pupils became
numerous, he then gave them seats, saying:—
It would be shame for me to hold my peace,
And for Isocrates to keep on talking.
And he used to accustom his disciples to discuss any question which might
be proposed, training them just as an orator might.
V. After that he went to Hermias the Eunuch, the tyrant of Atarneus, who,
as it is said, allowed him all kinds of liberties; and some say that he
formed a matrimonial connection with him, giving him either his daughter
or his niece in marriage, as is recorded by Demetrius of Magnesia, in his
essay on Poets and Prose-writers of the same name. And the same authority
says that Hermias had been the slave of Eubulus, and a Bithynian by
descent, and that he slew his master. But Aristippus, in the first book
of his treatise on Ancient Luxury, says that Aristotle was enamoured
of the concubine of Hermias, and that, as Hermias gave his consent, he
married her; and was so overjoyed that he sacrificed to her, as the
Athenians do to the Eleusinian Ceres. And he wrote a hymn to Hermias,
which is given at length below.
VI. After that he lived in Macedonia, at the court of Philip, and was
entrusted by him with his son Alexander as a pupil; and he entreated him
to restore his native city which had been destroyed by Philip, and had
his request granted; and he also made laws for the citizens. And also he
used to make laws in his schools, doing this in imitation of Xenocrates,
so that he appointed a president every ten days. And when he thought that
he had spent time enough with Alexander, he departed for Athens, having
recommended to him his relation Callisthenes, a native of Olynthus;
but as he spoke too freely to the king, and would not take Aristotle’s
advice, he reproached him and said:—
Alas! my child, in life’s primeval bloom,
Such hasty words will bring thee to thy doom.[45]
And his prophecy was fulfilled, for as he was believed by Hermolaus to
have been privy to the plot against Alexander, he was shut up in an iron
cage, covered with lice, and untended; and at last he was given to a
lion, and so died.
VII. Aristotle then having come to Athens, and having presided over
his school there for thirteen years, retired secretly to Chalcis,
as Eurymedon, the hierophant had impeached him on an indictment for
impiety, though Phavorinus, in his Universal History, says that his
prosecutor was Demophilus, on the ground of having written the hymn to
the beforementioned Hermias, and also the following epigram which was
engraven on his statue at Delphi:—
The tyrant of the Persian archer race,
Broke through the laws of God to slay this man
Not by the manly spear in open fight,
But by the treachery of a faithless friend.
And after that he died of taking a draught of aconite, as Eumelus says
in the fifth book of his Histories, at the age of seventy years. And
the same author says that he was thirty years old when he first became
acquainted with Plato. But this is a mistake of his, for he did only live
in reality sixty-three years, and he was seventeen years old when he
first attached himself to Plato. And the hymn in honour of Hermias is as
follows:—
O Virtue, won by earnest strife,
And holding out the noblest prize
That ever gilded earthly life,
Or drew it on to seek the skies;
For thee what son of Greece would
Deem it an enviable lot,
To live the life, to die the death,
That fears no weary hour, shrinks from no fiery breath?
Such fruit hast thou of heavenly bloom,
A lure more rich than golden heap,
More tempting than the joys of home,
More bland than spell of soft-eyed sleep.
For thee Alcides, son of Jove,
And the twin boys of Leda strove,
With patient toil and sinewy might,
Thy glorious prize to grasp, to reach thy lofty height.
Achilles, Ajax, for thy love
Descended to the realms of night;
Atarneus’ King thy vision drove,
To quit for aye the glad sun-light,
Therefore, to memory’s daughters dear,
His deathless name, his pure career,
Live shrined in song, and link’d with awe,
The awe of Xenian Jove, and faithful friendship’s law.[46]
There is also an epigram of ours upon him, which runs thus:—
Eurymedon, the faithful minister
Of the mysterious Eleusinian Queen,
Was once about t’ impeach the Stagirite
Of impious guilt. But he escaped his hands
By mighty draught of friendly aconite,
And thus defeated all his wicked arts.
Phavorinus, in his Universal History, says that Aristotle was the first
person who ever composed a speech to be delivered in his own defence in a
court of justice, and that he did so on the occasion of this prosecution,
and said that at Athens:—
Pears upon pear-trees grow; on fig-trees, figs.
Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says that he was born in the first year
of the ninety-ninth olympiad, and that he attached himself to Plato, and
remained with him for twenty years, having been seventeen years of age
when he originally joined him. And he went to Mitylene in the archonship
of Eubulus, in the fourth year of the hundred and eighth olympiad. But as
Plato had died in the first year of this same olympiad, in the archonship
of Theophilus, he departed for the court of Hermias, and remained there
three years. And in the archonship of Pythodotus he went to the court
of Philip, in the second year of the hundred and ninth olympiad, when
Alexander was fifteen years old; and he came to Athens in the second year
of the hundred and eleventh olympiad, and presided over his school in
the Lyceum for thirteen years; after that he departed to Chalcis, in the
third year of the hundred and fourteenth olympiad, and died, at about the
age of sixty-three years, of disease, the same year that Demosthenes died
in Calauria, in the archonship of Philocles.
VIII. It is said also that he was offended with the king, because of the
result of the conspiracy of Callisthenes against Alexander; and that the
king, for the sake of annoying him, promoted Anaximenes to honour, and
sent presents to Xenocrates. And Theocritus, of Chios, wrote an epigram
upon him to ridicule him, in the following terms, as it is quoted by
Ambryon in his account of Theocritus:—
The empty-headed Aristotle rais’d
This empty tomb to Hermias the Eunuch,
The ancient slave of the ill-us’d Eubulus.
[Who, for his monstrous appetite, preferred
The Bosphorus to Academia’s groves.]
And Timon attacked him too, saying of him:—
Nor the sad chattering of the empty Aristotle.
Such was the life of the philosopher.
IX. We have also met with his will, which is couched in the following
terms:—“May things turn out well; but if any thing happens to him, in
that case Aristotle has made the following disposition of his affairs.
That Antipater shall be the general and universal executor. And
until Nicanor marries my daughter, I appoint Aristomedes, Timarchus,
Hipparchus, Dioteles, and Theophrastus, if he will consent and accept
the charge, to be the guardians of my children and of Herpyllis, and
the trustees of all the property I leave behind me; and I desire them,
when my daughter is old enough, to give her in marriage to Nicanor; but
if any thing should happen to the girl, which may God forbid, either
before or after she is married, but before she has any children, then
I will that Nicanor shall have the absolute disposal of my son, and of
all other things, in the full confidence that he will arrange them in a
manner worthy of me and of himself. Let him also be the guardian of my
daughter and son Nicomachus, to act as he pleases with respect to them,
as if he were their father or brother. But if anything should happen to
Nicanor, which may God forbid, either before he receives my daughter in
marriage, or after he is married to her, or before he has any children
by her, then any arrangements which he may make by will shall stand.
But, if Theophrastus, in this case, should choose to take my daughter in
marriage, then he is to stand exactly in the same position as Nicanor.
And if not, then I will, that my trustees, consulting with Antipater
concerning both the boy and girl, shall arrange everything respecting
them as they shall think fit; and that my trustees and Nicanor,
remembering both me and Herpyllis, and how well she has behaved to me,
shall take care, if she be inclined to take a husband, that one be found
for her who shall not be unworthy of us; and shall give her, in addition
to all that has been already given her, a talent of silver, and three
maidservants if she please to accept them, and the handmaid whom she has
now, and the boy Pyrrhæus. And if she likes to dwell at Chalcis, she
shall have the house which joins the garden; but if she likes to dwell in
Stagira, then she shall have my father’s house. And whichever of these
houses she elects to take, I will that my executors do furnish it with
all necessary furniture, in such manner as shall seem to them and to
Herpyllis to be sufficient. And let Nicanor be the guardian of the child
Myrmex, so that he shall be conducted to his friends in a manner worthy