Note 553 — Chapter LXVII · THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. — THE SOPHISTS.

There is but too much evidence of the abundance of such jealousies and antipathies during the times of Plato, Aristotle, and Isokratês; see Stahr’s Aristotelia, ch. iii, vol. i, pp. 37, 68.

Aristotle was extremely jealous of the success of Isokratês, and was himself much assailed by pupils of the latter, Kephisodôrus and others, as well as by Dikæarchus, Eubulidês, and a numerous host of writers in the same tone: στρατὸν ὅλον τῶν ἐπιθεμένων Ἀριστοτέλει; see the Fragments of Dikæarchus, vol. ii, p. 225, ed. Didot. “De ingenio ejus (observes Cicero, in reference to Epicurus, de Finibus, ii, 25, 80) in his disputationibus, non de moribus, quæritur. Sit ista in Græcorum levitate perversitas, qui maledictis insectantur eos, a quibus de veritate dissentiunt.” This is a taint no way peculiar to Grecian philosophical controversy; but it has nowhere been more infectious than among the Greeks, and modern historians cannot be too much on their guard against it.