the "Acharnians," "Knights," "Clouds," and "Birds;" and Welcker, the "Clouds" and "Frogs." Madame Dacier published at Paris, 1692, a French version of the "Plutus" and the "Clouds," with critical notes, and an examination of each play, according to the rules of the theatre. Quintus S. Florens rendered the "Wasps," "Peace," and "Lysistrata" into Latin verse, but his translation is obscure on account of the obsolete words and phrases which it contains. Stanley, in his "Lives of the Philosophers," gave an English version of the "Clouds," London, 1687.—T. J.
ARISTOPHANES of Byzantium was one of the most celebrated of the Alexandrine scholars of the third century { {sc|b.c}}. He was the pupil of Callimachus and of Zenodotus of Ephesus, and the teacher of Aristarchus, the ablest of the Homeric critics of the school of Alexandria. He received from Ptolemy Philopator the superintendence of the Alexandrian library, and occupied a distinguished place in the history of his age, both as a poet, an annotator, and a scholar. His principal works were commentaries on Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides; and he is said to have invented the Greek accents, and to have introduced a system of punctuation.—F.
ARISTOPHON, a celebrated Greek painter, was a native of Thasos, and lived during the fifth century b.c.
ARISTOPHON of Azenia, an Athenian orator of the fourth century b.c., who was sent by the council of Four Hundred to negotiate with the Lacedemonians. Another orator bore this name,—he was the contemporary of Demosthenes, and it is said that Æschines at one time acted as his clerk.
ARISTOPHON, a comic poet of the time of Alexander the Great.
ARISTOTILE, surnamed il Fioravante, a celebrated architect of Bologna,—lived in the fifteenth century. Having gone to Russia under the auspices of Ivan III., he became the author of many public works in that country, and so highly valued were his talents, that his royal patron finally prevented his return to his own country. The church of the Assumption, the cathedral of St. Michael, the palace of Belvédère, and the restoration of the Kremlin, all testify to the talents and labours of this artist.—A. L.
ARISTOTILE, or BASTIANO DA SAN-GALLO, an Italian artist, born at Florence, 1481; died 31st May, 1551. He studied under Perugino and Michel Angelo, and became known by the title of Aristotile, "the little Aristotle," which was conferred upon him in consequence of his resemblance to a bust of the great philosopher. The early paintings of this artist were generally after the designs of his contemporaries, principally Michel Angelo; and he seems to have been impressed himself with the conviction that he was deficient in invention: for after a considerable period devoted to copying, in which he produced a great number of Madonnas and other pictures (many of which found their way to England), he turned his attention to architecture and decoration. In this department of art he was eminently successful—a proof of which may be found in the beautiful palace of the bishop of Troia, in the San-Gallo of Florence. Afterwards, in conjunction with Andrea del Sarto, he carried his reputation to a great height, by his fine illustrations of Machiavelli's comedy of Mandragora, and by his decoration of the grand court of the palace do Medicis, on the occasion of the marriage of Duke Cosmo with Leonora de Toledo.—A. L.
ARISTOTIMUS, a tyrant of Elis, lived in the 3rd century b.c.
ARISTOTLE. Is it required that the name and fame of this chief of the intellectual world, be defined and described? Second in power among ancient thinkers to his master Plato alone, he far surpassed him in range of inquiry; and the influence of no man, whether over Modern times or Antiquity, over the East as well as the West, over Christian and Arabian alike, at all approaches to his.
I.—Let us rapidly survey, at the outset, the material incidents that seem to have aided the development of this gigantic mind. Aristotle was born in the year 384 b.c. at Stagyra,—(according to some the modern Macrê or Nicalis; according to others, and more probably, the modern Stavro,)—a village of some political note in Greece, situated at the base of that peninsula of which Mount Athos is the apex. His father, Nicomachus, was a learned man and an eminent physician, the friend of Amyntas II. of Macedon, at whose court he appears to have stayed. The ability of Nicomachus, and his love of physical inquiry, must have largely influenced his son, and given him many of his tastes; while the position he occupied at the Macedonian court necessarily affected the whole life of Aristotle. Nicomachus died when his son had reached his seventeenth year, and he bequeathed the care of him to Proxenes of Atarnæa, in Mysia, who then resided at Stagyra. The affection, largely and discreetly bestowed by Proxenes and his excellent wife, was at no time forgotten by Aristotle. On the death of Proxenes he adopted his orphan child, and afterwards gave to him in marriage his daughter Pythias. We find in his testament, as reported by Diogenes Laertius, a paragraph that is almost touching, in which he orders monuments to be raised to the memories of Proxenes and his second Mother. Nor was this a solitary or singular manifestation of sentiment on the part of Aristotle. He seems to have ever lingered over the memories of past acquaintanceships and personal kindnesses,—a characteristic seldom displayed in his writings or in formal eulogies, but by acts, and through the whole life of the man. How he laments, for instance, over his friend Hermias, with whom he found refuge at Atarnæa, and who, falling through treachery into the hands of Artaxerxes Ochus, was strangled by that tyrant! The grief of Aristotle found vent in the only poems he ever wrote—one, a noble and simple pæan, replete with power and beauty; and the other, four verses, with the subjoined meaning, inscribed on the mausoleum erected by him in the temple of Delphi, to the memory of Hermias:—"A king of Persia, violator of law, destroyed him whose effigies is before you. A generous enemy would have contended with him in arms; a traitor surprised him under the mask of friendship." Soon after the death of Nicomachus, Proxenes sent Aristotle to Athens, where he lived about twenty years. He had the benefit of the instructions of Plato, to whom he afterwards erected an altar; but very soon he became a teacher and master himself. During the lifetime of Plato, he opened a course of rhetoric, in opposition to the teaching of that most effeminate and corrupting of rhetoricians, Isocrates; and soon after the death of the immortal head of the Academy, he began to give instruction in philosophy, initiating that school which, from Aristotle's habit of walking up and down while addressing his pupils, afterwards acquired the famous name of The Peripatetic. About this period he passed into Asia Minor, with the intention of travelling; but the tragical death, or rather murder of Hermias, seems to have arrested his design, and he sought refuge in Mitylene in the isle of Lesbos, with Pythias, sister or adopted daughter of Hermias, with whom—having subsequently married her—he passed some years of purest happiness. It seems to have been at Mitylene that he received the welcome invitation from Philip, to become the tutor of Alexander. Never, perhaps, in all history has there been another such conjunction! Two imperial Sovereigns—the teacher and the taught: one striding on to the possession of the fruits of all inquiry and thought, and laying firm the foundation of a dominion that time can never shake: the other, able, worthy, and resolute to subjugate the world! The extraordinary connection lasted but four brief years; nevertheless, the power of the monitor established from the first an authority over that unbridled genius, and inspired him with a respect which never wavered. The benefits were mutual. Aristotle taught the future Conqueror, the elements of morals, the great principles of politics, eloquence, music, and poetry; and he opened before him the vast field of natural history: that copy of the Iliad which was Alexander's constant companion during his triumphant Eastern march, had been annotated by Aristotle. The King, on the other hand, contributed largely in return to the perfection of those immortal structures that were being slowly reared by the philosopher. Pliny informs us, that through all his progress in Asia, he kept a very army of men employed in collecting and sending to Aristotle the animals, plants, and curious productions of the new climates, and hitherto altogether unexplored regions of the East. Athenæus affirms that, in carrying out this great and pious work of gratitude and personal predilection, Alexander spent about £200,000:—spent most nobly! It rendered possible that marvellous "History of Animals," and those other physiological treatises which the most illustrious naturalists of the present day admire more—much more justly and discriminately—than could have been done by antiquity itself. There is but one thing to deplore. Aided also by the munificence of his royal friend and pupil, Aristotle had finished a "collection of political constitutions" of all known
