Note 6 — Chapter I · LIFE OF ARISTOTLE.

This account rested originally (so far as we know) upon the statement of Hermippus (B.C. 220), and was adopted by Apollodôrus in his Chronology (B.C. 150), both of them good authorities, yet neither of them so early as Epikurus and Timæus. Diogenes Laertius and Dionysius of Halikarnassus alike follow Hermippus. Both the life of Aristotle ascribed to Ammonius, and the Anonymous Life first edited by Robbe (Leyden, 1861, p. 2), include the same strange chronological blunder: they affirm Aristotle to have come to Athens at the age of seventeen, and to have frequented the society of Sokrates (who had been dead more than thirty years) for three years; then to have gone to Plato at the age of twenty. Zeller imagines, and I think it likely, that Aristotle may have been for a short time pupil with Isokrates, and that the story of his having been pupil with Sokrates has arisen from confusion of the two names, which confusion has been seen on several occasions (Zeller, Gesch. der Philos. der Griechen, ii. 2, p. 15.)