vanced age. It is said that he starved himself, to put an end to severe sufferings caused by dropsy. The ancient grammarians speak of Aristarchus in the highest terms of praise, and his own school worshipped him as a god. They preferred his opinion to that of any other, even though it might seem wrong. We are told by Suidas that it was said he had written upwards of eight hundred commentaries. Some modern critics have doubted whether he ever committed his criticisms to writing, basing their doubt on the following anecdote:—Some person seems to have asked the critic why, seeing that he found so much fault with Homer, he did not himself write a poem. To which question the critic replied, that he could neither write as he wished, nor wished to write as he could. He may have said this, however, and written many a critical work, provided only he wrote no work that claimed to be itself the subject of criticism. It is certain that he wrote some discussions on analogy, in opposition to Crates, his great antagonist in criticism. Aristarchus illustrated very many writers of antiquity; but his especial attention was devoted to the construction of a proper text of Homer. He seems to have made two recensions; and the notes of subsequent scholiasts appear always to refer to his text. Hence the Homer which we now have is substantially the Homer which was edited by Aristarchus. He was a man of great critical acumen, superior to most of his contemporaries in the intimate knowledge of all the niceties of the Homeric dialect; yet differing from modern critics, in exercising his own powers too freely on his author, and making his text square with what the author should have written, not with what he had written.—J. D.
ARISTARCHUS, a disciple and friend of the apostle Paul, a native of Thessalonica.
ARISTARETE, the daughter and pupil of Nearchus; according to Pliny, she painted a fine picture of Æsculapius.
ARISTEAS of Proconnesus, and son of Caystrobius or Democharis, was said to be the author of an epic poem in three books, called "Arimaspeia." He is mentioned by Herodotus, from whose vague notice we may infer that Aristeas professed to have travelled as far as the Issedones, a barbarous northern nation, and to have heard among them the accounts of the one-eyed Arimaspi, and the other fabulous nations described in his epic. His history is wrapped up in myths. He was connected with the worship of Apollo, and is represented as having had power to make his soul go into and out of his body as he liked. Herodotus mentions two occasions on which he disappeared in Proconnesus; and he informs us, on the authority of the inhabitants of Metapontum, that the strange poet had turned up in that city, 340 years, according to his calculation, after his second disappearance in Proconnesus. On this occasion Aristeas informed his new friends, that he was in the habit of visiting them occasionally, but coming as he did in the company of the god Apollo, he always assumed the form of a raven. It is impossible to say at what time such a person flourished. Suidas says that, in addition to the epic, he wrote some things in prose, and that he also composed a theogony in a thousand lines. But there hangs a double uncertainty about this statement, for the text of Suidas is corrupt in this passage, and the most probable date of Aristeas assigns him to an age when prose was unknown.—J. D.
ARISTEAS, the alleged author of that ancient account of the origin of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, from which it derives its name of the Septuagint or the Seventy. He was an officer of the body-guard of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and was reputed by Philo, Josephus, and the Talmudists, to have been the author of a letter to his brother Philocrates, in which he narrated all the circumstances connected with the execution of that translation, and the effect of which was to attach a high degree of dignity, and even of supernatural authority to the work. Ludovicus de Vives was the first modern scholar who threw discredit upon the genuineness and historical authenticity of the letter. Humphrey Hody, in 1685, in his learned work, "De Bibliorum Textibus Originalibus," &c., discussed the question at full length, and is generally considered to have conclusively established the spuriousness of the work, and the fabulous character of its narrative. The letter is now universally regarded as the work of some Alexandrian Jew, who lived at a much later period.—P. L.
ARISTEAS of Crotona, the pupil of Pythagoras, afterwards his son-in-law, and subsequently his successor. For these facts, which contain all we know about him, we are indebted to Jamblicus.
ARISTEUS, the son of Adeimantus, was the general who commanded the Corinthian forces at the siege of Potidæa, at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, 432 b.c.
ARISTIDES, a Greek statuary of the fifth century b.c., much celebrated for his figures in bas-relief executed upon triumphal chariots. He is mentioned by Pausanias.
ARISTIDES, surnamed the Just, a distinguished statesman of ancient Athens, was the son of a certain Lysimachus, who appears to have been connected with some of the oldest families of the aristocracy, though he left his son no patrimony to speak of, as the latter was always remarkable for his poverty. The date of Aristides' birth cannot be assigned. He attached himself to the aristocratic party in his native state, and thus became the political antagonist of Themistocles, of whose unscrupulous schemes and bold innovations he was long the steady opponent. Aristides fought in the battle of Marathon, 490 b.c., at the head of his tribe, the Antiochis; and according to Plutarch (though Herodotus tells the story differently), it was owing to his persuasions that the tenfold command under which the army had originally been placed by the Athenians, was delegated into the hands of one individual, Miltiades,—a measure which mainly contributed to the success of the Greeks. Plutarch relates that the brunt of the engagement fell upon the tribes Leontis and Antiochis; and that, as the leader of the former was Themistocles, a favourable turn was given to the battle by the furious vigour with which the two great statesmen, warmed by a noble emulation, led on their men. The year after the battle of Marathon, Aristides was created archon, 489 b.c., and gained the honourable appellation of "The Just," by the unswerving integrity which characterised his conduct as chief magistrate. Gradually, however, the democratic policy of Themistocles, who was successfully developing the maritime power of Athens, gained the ascendancy; and about 483 b.c. Aristides was ostracised, or sent into honourable banishment for ten years. The story goes, that when the people were giving their votes on this occasion, a man who happened to be standing near Aristides, not knowing him by sight, and being himself unable to write, handed him his ostrakon, or earthenware voting-tablet, with the request that he would inscribe the name of Aristides on it, as that was the person he wished to see expelled from the state. "Has Aristides injured you?" asked the statesman. "No," answered this Athenian citizen, destined in all future time to serve as the type of ignorant malevolence, "I don't even know him; but I hate to hear him always called the 'The Just.'" Aristides retired to Ægina. Three years later, when the invasion of Xerxes made the presence of such an able citizen desirable, he was recalled; though it is not very clear whether the ostracism was formally reversed before or after the battle of Salamis, 480 b.c. Aristides had, at all events, a very important share in that great victory; and his conduct previously to the battle, in seeking, by a perilous night voyage from Ægina through the heart of the Persian fleet, an interview with Themistocles, in order that, by a friendly compact, they might sacrifice their private rivalries to the public good, forms one of the finest instances of political magnanimity on record. In the battle of Platæa, 479 b.c., which completed the destruction of the great invading armament of Xerxes, Aristides commanded the Athenian forces, and shared with the Spartan Pausanias, who was commander-in-chief, the honours of the victory.
Notwithstanding his conservative principles, Aristides appears to have found himself compelled, after the battle of Platæa, to put himself at the head of the reforming movement in Athens. He was the author of a decree by which all citizens were admitted to a share in the administration of public affairs, and which made any burgess, without regard to property or other qualification, eligible to the archonship.
Having been appointed colleague of Cimon, in conducting the Athenian share of the war which the confederate Greeks still continued to prosecute against Persia, Aristides recommended himself so strongly to the allies by his justice, candour, and affability, that, refusing any longer to submit to the "hegemony" of the Spartans, who had disgusted them by their arrogance and avarice, they requested him to assume the general command; thus recognizing Athens as the leading power in the confederation, 477 b.c. The Athenian statesman showed himself worthy of the confidence reposed in him. Intrusted with the delicate and difficult task of determining the contribution which each separate state was to furnish towards defraying the expenses of the war, he discharged his duties with such impartiality and
