pre-eminence of his views came out in the immortal treatise on Rhetoric, which many years later he composed. But it is remarkable that that treatise, while full of references to Isocrates, bears no traces of any ill-feeling towards him. In fact, it would seem that time must have worked a certain change in the character of Aristotle, for almost the only glimpses which we have of him during his earlier residence at Athens show him somewhat petulantly attacking both Plato and Isocrates; whereas his works which we possess, and which were written later, are calmly impersonal and devoid of all petulance of spirit.
Plato died in the year 347 B.C., and we find that in that year Aristotle, together with his fellow-disciple Xenocrates, left Athens, and went to reside at Atarneus, a town of Asia Minor. This migration was doubtless caused by the choice of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, to be Leader of the Academy. However natural it may have been that Aristotle should be held disqualified by incompatibility of opinions for becoming the representative of Plato, still it may have been unpleasant to him to see another preferred to himself, and especially one so inferior to himself in intellect as Speusippus. And Xenocrates may have felt something of the same kind on his own account. Accordingly, the two left Athens together. Aristotle had more than one reason for selecting Atarneus as his new place of abode. It was the home of Proxenus, his guardian, of whom mention has already been made; and it was ruled over by Hermeias, an enlightened prince, with whom both Aristotle and Xenocrates had had the opportunity of
