Aristodemus

“ The victory brought no happiness to the king, for omens of evil seemed to pursue him.
In the temple a brazen shield fell from the hand of the statue of Artemis the goddess. The daughter of Aristodemus appeared to her father and bade him lay aside his armour. He obeyed, and she then placed on his head a crown of gold and clad him in a white robe. These things meant that the death of the king was near.
Aristodemus believed that not only he but his country was doomed, and deeming that he had sacrificed his daughter in vain, he slew himself in his despair on her tomb. ”

“ But which seems to you most worthy of admiration, Aristodemus—the artist who forms images void of motion and intelligence, or one who hath the skill to produce animals that are endued, not only with activity, but understanding. ”

“ And canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, if the gods take care of man? Hath not the glorious privilege of walking upright been alone bestowed on him, whereby he may, with the better advantage, survey what is around him, contemplate, with more ease, those splendid objects which are above, and avoid the numerous ills and inconveniences which would otherwise befall him? Other animals, indeed, they have provided with feet, by which they may remove from one place to another ”

“ I will first state what I once heard fall from his lips in a discussion with Aristodemus, (2) "the little," as he was called, on the topic of divinity. (3) Socrates had observed that Aristodemus neither sacrificed nor gave heed to divination, but on the contrary was disposed to ridicule those who did.
(2) See Plat. "Symp." 173 B: "He was a little fellow who never wore any shoes, Aristodemus, of the deme of Cydathenaeum."—Jowett. (3) Or, "the divine element."
So tell me, Aristodemus (he began) , are there any human beings who have won your admiration for their wisdom? ”

“ Aristodemus lived to see the children, and presently died of a sickness. The Lacedaemonians of that day planned to follow their custom and make the eldest of the children king. But the children being in all respects alike, they knew not which to choose ”

“ There he is mistaken: but they are still fresh in the memory of his informant, who had just been repeating them to Glaucon, and is quite prepared to have another rehearsal of them in a walk from the Piraeus to Athens. Although he had not been present himself, he had heard them from the best authority. Aristodemus, who is described as having been in past times a humble but inseparable attendant of Socrates, had reported them to him (compare Xen. Mem.) ”

“ This Ophioneus, the Messenian seer, was blind from birth and practised the following method of divination. By learning the facts relevant to each case, both private and public, he thus foretold the future. This then was the way he practised his art. Aristodemus, becoming king, constantly was ready to show all reasonable favour to the people, and held all the nobles in honor, especially Cleonnis and Damis. He maintained good relations with the allies, sending gifts to the Arcadian leaders and to Argos and Sicyon. ”

“ At last, Temenus, Cresphontes and Aristodemus, the sons of Aristomachus, complained to the oracle that its instructions had proved fatal to those who had followed them. They received the answer that by the “third fruit” the “third generation” was meant, and that the “narrow passage” was not the isthmus of Corinth, but the straits of Rhium. ”

“ We may also remark that Aristodemus is called 'the little' in Xenophon's Memorabilia, i. 4 (cp. Sym. 173 B) . The speeches have been said to follow each other in pairs : Phaedrus and Pausanias being the ethical, Eryximachus and Aristophanes the physical speakers, while in Agathon and Socrates poetry and philosophy blend together. The speech of Phaedrus is also described as the mythological, that of Pau- sanias as the political, that of Eryximachus as the scientific, that of Aristophanes as the artistic (!) , that of Socrates as the philo- sophical. ”

“ Aristodemus meeting Socrates in holiday attire, is invited by him to a banquet at the house of Agathon, who had been sacrificing in thanksgiving for his tragic victory on the day previous. But no sooner has he entered the house than he finds that he is alone; Socrates has stayed behind in a fit of abstraction, and does not appear until the banquet is half over. ”

“ He was slain at Delphi by the sons of Pylades and Electra, the kinsmen, through their mother, of the house of Agamemnon, that house which the Heracleidæ with their Dorian army had dispossessed. The claims of Aristodemus descended to his two sons, Procles and Eurysthenes, children under the guardianship of their maternal uncle, Theras. Temenus, the eldest of the sons of Aristomachus, took the kingdom of Argos. For the two remaining kingdoms, that of Sparta and that of Messenia, his two nephews, who were to rule jointly, and their uncle Cresphontes, had to cast lots. ”

“ Aristodēme, a daughter of Priam.
Aristodēmus, son of Aristomachus, was one of the Heraclidæ. He, with his brothers Temenus and Cresphontes, invaded Peloponnesus, conquered it, and divided the country among themselves, 1104 years before the christian era. He married Argia, by whom he had the twins Procles and Eurysthenes. He was killed by a thunderbolt at Naupactum, though some say that he died at Delphi in Phocis. Pausanias, bk. 2, ch. 18; bk. 3, chs. 1 & 16.—Herodotus, bk. 7, ch. 204; bk. 8, ch. 131.――A king of Messenia, who maintained a famous war against Sparta. ”

“ Disputation was one of the products of the Greek mind; and Aristotle was its prophet.
Now for Philosophy. This comprised nearly the whole of Aristotle's Physical treatises—his very worst side—together with his Metaphysics, some parts of which are hardly distinguishable from the Physics. Next was the very difficult treatise—"De Anima," on the Mind, or Soul—and some allied psychological treatises, as that on Memory. Such was the ordinary and sufficing curriculum. It was allowed to be varied with a part of the Ethics; but in this age we do not find the Politics ”

“ Practical philosophy embraced ethics and politics; theoretical philosophy, physics and logic. Metaphysics he considered to be the science concerning that substance which has the principle of motion and rest inherent to itself. To Aristotle the soul is that by which man first lives, feels, and understands. Hence to the soul he assigned three faculties: nutritive, sensitive, and intellective. He further considered the soul to be twofold--rational and irrational--and in some particulars elevated the sense perceptions above the mind. Aristotle defined wisdom as the science of first Causes. ”

“ Ariston asked again.
"Only the Gods can answer that," Aristotle replied. "It is safe to say that what human ambition can accomplish, he will do. He was my pupil, and there are those who maintain that he knows more than his master!"
Although the philosopher spoke with a smile, there was a trace of irony in his tone that did not escape the alert Athenian.
"You hear that?" he cried, turning to Clearchus. "Here is a boy who begins by conquering his instructor. Where will he end?"
"They say he has ended already, up there among the savages," Chares said lazily. ”

“ It used to be the fashion to make little of the medieval scholars for the high estimation in which they held Aristotle. Occasionally even yet one hears narrowly educated men, I am sorry to say much more frequently scientific specialists than others, talk deprecatingly of this ardent devotion to Aristotle. No one who knows anything about Aristotle ever indulges in such an exhibition of ignorance of the realities of the history of philosophy and science. To know Aristotle well is to think of him as probably possessed of the greatest human mind that ever existed. ”

“ In laying down his famous doctrine that it is the characteristic of virtue to preserve “the mean,” Aristotle was not entirely original. In this, as in many other cases, he only fixed into scientific form a conception which had been previously floating in the mind of Greece. Hesiod, the Seven Sages, the unknown authors of ‘Maxims,’ the Gnomic poets, Pindar, and the Tragedians, had all preached the doctrine of moderation—a doctrine most congenial to the natural good taste of the Hellenic people, who instinctively despised excess in any form as unintellectual and barbarous. ”

“ Aristotle, speaking generally, treated of every subject which came within the range of ancient thought, and if we regard matter, and not form or literary style, he treated of each of these subjects better than any one else. He also initiated many new branches of inquiry, dependent on observation and induction, and thus not only represented in himself the culmination of Greek speculative philosophy, but was also, as far as possible, the forerunner of modern science. ”

“ But among them all Aristotle stands out as the “master of those that knew”—the man who attained in the Middle Ages such celebrity and authority that he narrowly escaped being canonised as a saint in the Roman calendar. If that distinction really belonged to the benefactors of mankind, I know not that any man ever lived who had a better claim to it. For his life and activity mark an epoch not only in the progress of many sciences, but in the general culture of the human mind, to which I know no parallel. ”

“ Midway between the natural and the supernatural worlds Aristotle placed man, whom he regarded as bound to the world of nature by his body and the lower elements of his mind, but connected with God through his reason, for he held that the human mind possessed attributes of the divine intelligence. Aristotle’s psychology was based on his belief that there was a purpose in all nature, and on his view that in the individual were always united form and material. ”

“ The name and fame of Aristotle, never quite forgotten even in the darkest age, [80] and now known and extolled among Moorish scholars, formed indeed the ground of that immense reputation which Arabian philosophy enjoyed in Europe. The Latin schools had long been familiar with the logical writings of Aristotle, but the modern spirit, soon to show [47] itself as it were precociously in Bacon and Albertus Magnus, was already awake, and under its influence men had begun to demand more than the mere training of the mind in abstract reasoning. ”

“ The work of Aristotle is amazing, for he not only wrote on every conceivable subject, but wrote as a master. For more than a thousand years after his death, the books he wrote were studied in schools and universities, and formed the foundation of all education. He wrote on astronomy, mathematics, biology, botany and many other subjects, and he has not only been called the Father of Natural Science, {384} but his writings remained the standard authority on many scientific subjects for centuries after his death. Aristotle was more practical than Plato, though less inspiring as a writer. ”

“ Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he, too, believes. But every thing in this world is fleeting and transitory, and, therefore, it is not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental mind of Aristotle with all his learning and all his logic. ”

“ And this supplies Eudemus with a standard for the determination of the mean by reason, which Aristotle demanded, but himself left vague. Whatever furthers us in our progress towards a knowledge of God is good, every hindrance is evil. The same spirit may be traced in the author of the chapters which appear as an appendix to book i. of Aristotle's Metaphysics. They have been attributed to Pasicles, the nephew of Eudemus. For the rest, Eudemus shows even less philosophical independence than Theophrastus. ”

“ Aristotle at once maintains the primacy of metaphysics and vindicates the independence of the special sciences. He is at the same time the only Greek philosopher who clearly discriminated discovery and disputation, science and dialectic, the knowledge of a definite subject from its appropriate principles and the discussion of anything whatever from opinions and authority. On one side he places science and philosophy, on the other dialectic and sophistry. ”

“ This strange, exotic, ascetic view was adopted by some philosophers, and especially by the Pythagoreans, and so transmitted to Plato. Aristotle in the Eudemus, written about 352, when he was thirty-two, also believed in it. Accordingly, the soul of Eudemus, when it left his body, is said to be returning home: the soul is made subject to the casting of lots, and in coming from the other world to this it is supposed to forget its former visions: but its disembodied life is regarded as its natural life in a better world. ”

“ Thus in our day, that little which Aristotle can bring, is peculiar for its inventive reasoning, its suggestiveness, its metaphysics, and is useful for other pedants, who work with the same "Sursum corda," who institute new dialectics and modes of forming the reason (judgment?) which are as much viler than those of Aristotle, as may be the philosophy of Aristotle is incomparably viler than that of the ancients. ”

“ Aristoteles’ writings and teaching embraced a great variety of subjects, and they were so genuine that he became the leader of one of the principal schools of Greece; and his method of study and many of his facts and ideas have influenced mankind down to the present day. His works were much studied during the Middle Ages, and although his books on botany have been lost, still he influenced the study of botany through his pupil, Theophrastus, who became the great light of after years. ”