When Alexander marched into Asia, Aristotle re turned to Athens. His fellow-student Xenocrates, whom Plato had characterised as requiring the spur as much as Aristotle required the curb, was now at the head of the Academy, Aristotle, whose mental vigour was not yet abated, and whose consciousness of superiority led him sometimes to express himself with arrogance, could not be silent while Xenocrates taught•philosophy. He immediately procured the Lyceum, which Pericles had established in the environs of the city as a school of military exercise. In this delightful retreat, finely skirted with trees and interspersed with fountains, he chose to deliver his lectures to his crowded auditories, walking in the shade ; and hence he and his disciples gained the name of Peripatetics.
Aristotle became a public teacher when he was about fifty years of age. The number of his admirers was great ; but he was also assailed by many enemies, whom jealousy or envy incensed against him. He was unmo lested while Alexander lived ; but soon after his death, the malignity of his rivals and calumniators shewed it self without disguise. Like the illustrious Socrates, he was accused of impiety, because he had commemorated the virtues of Hermias and Pythias, with honours and ceremonies which were due to none but the gods. The most violent, or at least the most avowed of his adver saries, was Eurymedon, the priest of Ceres, who charged him with profaning the Eleusinian rites, He prepared a'spirited defence, In which he exposed the mean and detestable motives of his enemies ; but, reflecting on the inefficacy of argument in silencing the voice of pre judice, lie prudently withdrew from the power of his ex asperated opponents, and took refuge in Chalcis, a city of Eubcea, where he died in the course of the follow ing vcar, the third of the 114th Olympiad, and the six ty-thiro of his age, after having taught in the Lyceum above twelve years. He was survived by his second -wile Herpylis, by Nicomachus, the son of this mar riage, and by Pythias, the daughter of his former wife, among whom he divided his fortune, with directions that, if Nicanor, the son of his guardian Proxenus, would accept his daughter's hand, he should also share in the inheritance of the family.
To his respected disciple Theophrastus, who suc ceeded him in the Lyceum, he left his valuable library, and all his own writings. Theophrastus left this trea sure to Neleus, one of his scholars, who unfortunately allowed it to fall into the hands of his illiterate heirs, citizens of Scepsis, a town subject to the king of Per -::;ainus. That they might not be plundered of a pro perty, the value of which was unknown to them, they deposited all their books in a subterraneous vault, where they were concealed an hundred and thirty years, during which period they sustained great injury from vermin and damp. In a very mutilated state, they were sold to Apellicon, of Athens, who had them transcribed, and endeavoured to supply the numerous chasms by his own conjectures. Tne au t ograliha of Aristotle were
probably allowed to perish. The library of Apellicon, including the copy of Aristotle's works, was sent by Sylla from Athens to Rome. Tyrannion, the gramma rian, was permitted to take a copy from the corrupted text of Apellicon's edition. This copy, probably more erroneous than the former, was procured by a contem porary of Cicero, Andronicus the Rhodian, who employ ed himself with great diligence, in correcting and me thodising the hitherto neglected writings of Aristotle. Notwithstanding the care bestowed by this industrious editor, the text was still vitiated by innumerable errors, which no man but the author himself was capable of de tecting, and which no inferior hand could completely remove. It is uncertain whether Andronicus succeeded in 'restoring all the works of Aristotle ; but many of them have, since that age, perished in the wreck of po litical revolutions, and not a few from the occasional ebullitions of theological bigotry. The number of trea tises which he had written, according to Diogenes La ertius, exceeded four hundred ; of which number about nine-tenths have irretrievably perished. No: more than forty-eight, which are allowed to be authentic, hive reached our times.
The personal appearance of Aristotle was by no means prepossessing. Diminutive in stature, and puny in his limbs, he had very small eyes, a squeaking voice, and a disagreeable hesitation in his speech. His consti tution was naturally feeble, and he suffered much from dyspeptic affections, to which there is reason to believe his death must be attributed. In his diet he was strictly temperate, or rather abstemious; in the use of sleep more sparing than was prudent. In his dress he is said to have been so finical, when he studied under Plato, that, by his slovenly associates, he was accounted a first rate coxcomb. While the multitude of pretenders to science, who could ape their philosophical instructors only in sordid attire, and a negligence of all the proprie ties of life, affected to be superior to these minute at-' tentions. Aristotle never appeared in public, but in an elegant and graceful habit, having his hair cut short, his beard shaven, and his fingers sparkling with valuable rings. A profound or learned fop was in those days re garded as an anomaly ; but of Aristotle we can only believe, that, as he had a horror at every thing tawdry or negligent, and an innate sense of concinnity, which was refined and chastened by habit, his precision was universal, being not less conspicuous in the becoming decorations of his person, and the neatness of his appa rel, than in the selection of his language, and the struc ture of his sentences; always correct, never gaudy, of ten exquisitely polished, without ever betraying the slightest appearance of fastidiousness or affectation.