Note 5 — Chapter I · LIFE OF ARISTOTLE.

See the Fragments of Timæus in Didot, Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, Fr. 70-74; also Aristokles, ap. Eusebium, Præp. Evang. xv. 2; Diogenes, L. x. 8; Athenæus, viii. p. 354. Timæus called Aristotle σοφιστὴν ὀψιμαθῆ καὶ μισητόν, καὶ τὸ πολυτίμητον ἰατρεῖον ἀρτίως ἀποκεκλεικότα. The speaker in Athenæus designates him as ὁ φαρμακοπώλης. The terms used by these writers are illtempered and unbecoming in regard to so great a man as Aristotle; but this is irrelevant to the question, whether they do not describe, in perverted colouring, some real features in his earlier life, or whether there was not, at least, a chronological basis of possibility for them. That no such features were noticed by other enemies of Aristotle, such as Eubulides and Kephisodôrus, is a reason as far as it goes for not believing them to be real, yet not at all a conclusive reason; nor is the speaker in Athenæus exact when he says that Epikurus is the only witness, for we find Timæus making the same statements. The ἰατρεῖον (see Antiphanes, apud Polluc. iv. 183 — Fragmenta Comic. cxxv., Meineke) of a Greek physician (more properly we should call the ἰατρὸς a general practitioner and chemist) was the repository of his materials and the scene of his important operations; for many of which instructions are given in the curious Hippokratic treatise entitled Κατ’ Ἰητρεῖον, vol. iii. pp. 262-337 of the edition of M. Littré, who in his preface to the treatise, p. 265, remarks about Aristotle:— “Il paraît qu’Aristote, qui était de famille médicale, avoit renoncé à une officine de ce genre, d’une grande valeur.” Stahr speaks of this ἰατρεῖον as if Aristotle had set up one at Athens (Aristotelia, p. 38), which the authorities do not assert; it was probably at Stageira. Ideler (Comm. ad Aristot. Meteorol. iv. 3, 16, p. 433) considers this story about Aristotle’s ἰατρεῖον to have been a fiction arising out of various expressions in his writings about the preparation of drugs — τὰ φάρμακα ἕψειν, &c. I think this is far-fetched. And when we find Aristokles rejecting the allegation about the ἰατρεῖον, by speaking of it as an ἄδοξον ἰατρεῖον, we can admit neither the justice of the epithet nor the ground of rejection.