2 SCANTY MATERIALS. Britain, and leaving abundant traces of itself in the language and modes of thought of every European nation, is assuredly without a parallel. Yet of its founder's personal history all that we can learn is to be gathered from meager compilations, scattered anecdotes, and accidental notices, which contain much that is obviously false and even contradictory, and from which a systematic account, in which tolerable confidence may be placed, can only be deduced by a careful and critical investigation. It is not, however, to the indifference of his contemporaries, or to that of their immediate successors, that the paucity of details relating to Aristotle's life is due. If we may trust the account of a commentator, Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second of the Macedonian dynasty in Egypt, not only bestowed a great deal of study upon the writings of the illustrious philosopher, but also wrote a biography of him'. At any rate, about the same time, Hermippus of Smyrna, one of the Alexandrine school of learned men, whose research and accuracy is highly praised by Josephus", composed a work extending to some length, On the Lives of Distinguished Philosophers and Orators, in which Aristotle appears to have occupied a considerable space. Another author, whose date there is no 1 David the Armenian, in a commentary on the Categories, cited by Brandis in the Rheinisches Museum, Vol. i. p. 250, and since published by him from two Vatican MSS., says, Tv'ApiσTOTEXIKŵv συγγραμμάτων πολλῶν ὄντων χιλίων τὸν ἀριθμόν, ὡς φησι Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Φιλάδελφος, ἀναγραφὴν αὐτῶν ποιησάμενος καὶ τὸν βίον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν diádeσi. K. T.λ. (p. 22. ed. Bekk.) an important passage if not corrupt, as showing who the Ptolemy was that is elsewhere cited in connection with Aristotle's works. 2 Contr. Apion. lib. i. ἀνὴρ περὶ πᾶσαν ἱστορίαν ἐπιμελής. "Athenæus (xiii. p. 589. xv. p. 696.) cites him, év t❖ πρútą περὶ ̓Αριστοτέλους. EARLY LITERATURE ON THE SUBJECT. 3 direct means of ascertaining, but who probably is to be placed somewhere about the end of the third century before the Christian era, Timotheus of Athens, is also to be added to the number of his early biographers. But independently of such works as these, antiquity abounded in others which contained information on this subject in a less direct form. Aristoxenus of Tarentum, who during a part of his life was himself a pupil of Aristotle, in his biographies of Socrates and Plato had frequent occasion to speak of the great Stagirite. Epicurus, in a treatise which is cited under the title of A Letter on the Pursuits and Habits of former Philosophers, related several stories to his disparagement. The same, perhaps, was the case with Aristippus (apparently the grandson of the founder of the Cyrenean school) in his work On the Luxury of Antiquity. And yet more valuable materials than were furnished by the two last-mentioned works, of which at least the former appears to have been composed in that vulgar spirit which delights in finding something to degrade to its own level all that is above it', seem to have been contained in the treatises of Demetrius the Magnesian and Apollodorus the Athenian. The first of these was a contemporary of Cicero This seems to follow from the fact that Diogenes only quotes him in the lives of Plato, Speusippus, Aristotle, and Zeno of Cittium. He is therefore no authority for any thing later than the time of the last. Zeno was an old man B. C. 260. (Diog. Laert. vii. 6.) Timotheus's work is quoted under the title Περὶ Βίων. 7 See the stories which were related in it of Protagoras, also mentioned by Athenæus, loc. cit. 4 ALEXANDRINE WRITERS. and his celebrated friend Atticus', and appears to have exercised his acumen in detecting such erroneous stories prevalent in his time as arose from the confusion of different poets and philosophers who had borne the same name2; a cause which formerly in the absence of hereditary surnames, and under the operation of many motives for falsification, was much more fertile in its results than can now be easily imagined3. The second is an authority which for the purposes of the modern biographer of Aristotle is the most important of all. He, like Hermippus, was an Alexandrine scholar, and pupil of the celebrated commentator and editor of the Homeric poems, Aristarchus1. Among his voluminous works was one On the Sects of Philosophers, which no doubt contained much that was interesting on our subject; but what renders him valuable above any other of these lost writers, and makes us treasure up with avidity the slightest notices by him which have come down to us, is his celebrated Chronology, a composition in iambic verse, often cited under the title of Xpoviká, or XpoVIKY σúvтağıs, by that compiler whose treatise is unfortunately the most ancient systematic account of Aristotle's life which has escaped the ravages of time. These citations are invaluable, not merely for the positive information which we gain from them, but because they serve also, as we shall have occasion to 1 Cicero, Brut. 91. He is alluded to in Epp. ad. Attic. iv. 11. but in viii. 11. ix. 9. xiii. 6. it is Demetrius the Syrian, a rhetorician, who is referred to. This latter is also spoken of in Brut. 91. * See Galen, Comment. in Hippocr. de nat. Hom. ii. p. 105, 109, and in Hippocr. de Humor. i. p. 5, ed. Kuehn. 4 Suidas, sub v. 'Απολλόδωρος. SMALL CIRCULATION OF THEIR BOOKS. 5 observe in the sequel, for a touchstone of anecdotes whose authority is otherwise uncertain". The foregoing list of authors, which might be yet further enlarged, abundantly shows that in the beginning of the first century before Christ there were materials for compiling a biography of Aristotle as detailed as one of Newton or Young could be in the present day. This, however, soon afterwards ceased to be the case. When the only means of obtaining the copy of a book was by the laborious process of transcription, the expense necessarily confined its acquisition to comparatively few persons, and when to this drawback we add those arising from voluminous size and but partially interesting subject, the circulation would be very limited indeed. It may be questioned, perhaps, whether some of the works we have noticed. ever found their way beyond the walls of the royal library at Alexandria, except in the shape of extracts. If this were the case, the destruction of the whole or a great part of that library in the siege of the city by Julius Cæsar (B. C. 48) would very probably cause their annihilation. At all events, in subsequent times, when Rome was the centre of civilization as well as of empire, works of such a description became totally unfit to satisfy the wants of the age. A certain acquaintance with Greek literature, Greek philosophy, and Greek history, became an essential accomplishment for the fashionable Roman, but this acquaintance was 6 See with reference to Apollodorus and his works, Voss. De Historicis Græcis, p. 132, et seq. Heyne, ad Apollodori Bibliothec. Vol. i. p. 385, 457, and Brandis in the Rheinisches Museum, Vol. iii. p. 110. in whose opinion the chronology of Apollodorus is founded on that of Eratosthenes. 6 GREEK LITERATURE FASHIONABLE AT ROME. nothing like the one which Cato and Scipio, which Atticus and Cicero possessed. It was expected to be extremely comprehensive', and, as all comprehensive knowledge must be when popularized, it was proportionally superficial. To feed this appetite for general information was the work of the needy men of letters under the Empire. In the time of the early Ptolemies and of the Kings of Pergamus their energies had been directed by the munificence of those monarchs to the accumulation of vast stores of erudition on particular subjects. The number of monographies, and the minute subdivision of intellectual labour which prevailed under their patronage, is scarcely paralleled by the somewhat similar case of Germany at the present day. Homer, a sacred book for the Greeks, was the principal subject of their labours; but indeed there 1 See Juvenal, Sat. vii. 229-236, of the qualifications required from the masters of his time: Vos savas imponite leges, Ut præceptori verborum regula constet, Ut legal historias, auctores noverit omnes Tanquam ungues digitosque suos; ut forte rogatus Quot Siculus Phrygibus vini donaverit urnas. The work of Ptolemy the son of Hephæstion, which we shall notice afterwards, is quite in accordance with this satirical description. The censorship which was established in the time of Tiberius accelerated the degeneracy of the national taste; its operation being fatal to an acquaintance with all healthy literature, no less than to its production. Thus Caligula wished to destroy the writings of Homer, Virgil, and Livy. (Sueton. Vit. § 34.) Of Nero we are told "Liberales disciplinas omnes fere puer attigit; sed a philosophiâ eum mater avertit, monens imperaturo contrariam esse, a cognitione veterum oratorum Seneca præceptor, quo diutius in admiratione sui detineret." (Sueton. Vit. § 52.) |