Greek Texts & Translations

Short-lived, I ween, wilt thou be, my child, by what thou sayest.

And so indeed it fell out. For he, being suspected of complicity in the plot of Hermolaus against the life of Alexander, was confined in an iron cage and carried about until he became infested with vermin through lack of proper attention; and finally he was thrown to a lion and so met his end.

To return to Aristotle: he came to Athens, was head of his school for thirteen years, and then withdrew to Chalcis because he was indicted for impiety by Eurymedon the hierophant, or, according to Favorinus ^note in his Miscellaneous History, by Demophilus, the ground of the charge being the hymn he composed to the aforesaid Hermias, 5.1.6 as well as the following inscription for his statue at Delphi ^note:

This man in violation of the hallowed law of the immortals was unrighteously slain by the king of the bow-bearing Persians, who overcame him, not openly with a spear in murderous combat, but by treachery with the aid of one in whom he trusted.

At Chalcis he died, according to Eumelus in the fifth book of his Histories, by drinking aconite, at the age of seventy. The same authority makes him thirty years old when he came to Plato; but here he is mistaken. For Aristotle lived to be sixty-three, and he was seventeen when he became Plato's pupil.

The hymn in question runs as follows:

O virtue, toilsome for the generation of mortals to achieve, the fairest prize that life can win, for thy beauty, O virgin, it were a doom glorious in Hellas even to die and to endure fierce, untiring labours. Such courage dost thou implant in the mind, imperishable, better than gold, dearer than parents or soft-eyed sleep. For thy sake Heracles, son of Zeus, and the sons of Leda endured much in the tasks whereby they pursued thy might. 5.1.8 And yearning after thee came Achilles and Ajax to the house of Hades, and for the sake of thy dear form the nursling of Atarneus too was bereft of the light of the sun. Therefore shall his deeds be sung, and the Muses, the daughters of Memory, shall make him immortal, exalting the majesty of Zeus, guardian of strangers, and the grace of lasting friendship.

There is, too, something of my own upon the philosopher which I will quote ^note:

Eurymedon, the priest of Deo's mysteries, was once about to indict Aristotle for impiety, but he, by a draught of poison, escaped prosecution. This then was an easy way of vanquishing unjust calumnies.

Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History affirms that Aristotle was the first to compose a forensic speech in his own defence written for this very suit; and he cites him as saying that at Athens ^note

Pear upon pear grows old and fig upon fig. ^note

According to Apollodorus in his Chronology he was born in the first year of the 99th Olympiad. ^note He attached himself to Plato and resided with him twenty years, having become his pupil at the age of seventeen. He went to Mitylene in the archonship of Eubulus in the fourth year of the 108th Olympiad. ^note When Plato died in the first year of that Olympiad, ^note during the archonship of Theophilus, he went to Hermias and stayed with him three years. 5.1.10 In the archonship of Pythodotus, in the second year of the 109th Olympiad, ^note he went to the court of Philip, Alexander being then in his fifteenth year. His arrival at Athens was in the second year of the 111th Olympiad, ^note and he lectured in the Lyceum for thirteen years; then he retired to Chalcis in the third year of the 114th Olympiad ^note and died a natural death, at the age of about sixty-three, in the archonship of Philocles, in the same year in which Demosthenes died at Calauria. It is said that he incurred the king's displeasure because he had introduced Callisthenes to him, and that Alexander, in order to cause him annoyance, honoured Anaximenes ^note and sent presents to Xenocrates.

Theocritus of Chios, according to Ambryon in his book On Theocritus, ridiculed him in an epigram which runs as follows ^note:

To Hermias the eunuch, the slave withal of Eubulus, an empty monument was raised by empty-witted Aristotle, who by constraint of a lawless appetite chose to dwell at the mouth of the Borborus [muddy stream] rather than in the Academy.

Timon again attacked him in the line ^note:

No, nor yet Aristotle's painful futility. ^note

Such then was the life of the philosopher. I have also come across his will, which is worded thus:

"All will be well; but, in case anything should happen, Aristotle has made these dispositions. Antipater is to be executor in all matters and in general;