“in order,” as he is reported to have said, “that the Athenians might not have another opportunity of sinning against philosophy, as they had already done once in the person of Socrates.”
Chalcis was the original home of the ancestry of Aristotle, and he appears to have had some property there; but it was especially a safe place of refuge for him, as being occupied at this time by a Macedonian garrison. He probably intended only to make a short sojourn there, till circumstances should be changed. He must have fully foreseen that in a short space of time the Macedonian arms would prevail, and restore at Athens the government which had hitherto protected him. He left his school and library in charge of Theophrastus, doubtless looking forward to a speedy return to them and to the resumption of those labours which had already consummated so much. And all this would have happened but that, within a year’s time, in 322 B.C., he was seized with illness, and died somewhat suddenly at Chalcis, in the sixty-third year of his age. The story that he had taken poison may be dismissed as fabulous. A more trustworthy account speaks of his having suffered from impaired digestion, the natural result of his habits of application, and this may very likely have been the cause of his death.
The will of Aristotle, or what professes to be such, has been preserved amongst a heap of very questionable traditions, by Diogenes Laertius. If not genuine it is cleverly invented, and is the work of a romancer who wished to credit the Stagirite with evidences of a generous and just disposition. The property to be dis-
